Footballers who contributed to their own transfer fees

I got the idea to write this blog having read the most recent piece by the ever excellent @mahirabdullah on the loan transfer of Philipe Coutinho from Barca to Aston Villa this week and the rocky road that his career has hit since leaving Liverpool in what at the time was the 2nd costliest transfer in the history of football.

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In his blog @mahirabdullah mentions that Coutinho's motives for leaving Liverpool were primarily financial but as I mentioned to him in the comments section, it has been widely reported that Coutinho forked out a significant amount himself to help seal the move to the Nou Camp.

Originally, I had stated that I thought the amount was £7million but on Googling it I found that fairly reputable sources such as the BBC and Times newspaper were reporting that Coutinho paid £11.5 million pounds out of his own pocket to help meet the difference in valuation between the 2 clubs.

Now we all know that top footballers get paid an obscene amount of money but even so £11.5million was more than a year's gross salary for Coutinho at either Liverpool or his new club Barca.

Imagine putting yourself in Coutinho's shoes and being offered your dream job on the condition that you had to pay a year's wage before signing what essentially amounts to a fixed term contract. I think I'd probably tell them where to shove it!

Now I'm not saying Coutinho isn't motivated by money at all and god knows he is still worth hundreds of millions of pounds despite the cash he forked out for his own transfer but his actions do suggest his motives for moving weren't entirely financial.

As I recently commented on @wolfgangsport 's blog on the most controversial transfers in Premier League history, players move for at least 1 of the following 2 reasons

1. Money
2. Status/Success

I would suggest that Coutinho moved to Barca for a little bit of both.

Let's not forget that Coutinho left Liverpool after 5 years on Merseyside during which time he'd won nothing! In fact, during his whole career up to that point he'd only collected a winners' medal for the Coppa Italia back in 2011 while with Inter Milan.I think it's fair to say then that his move to Barca was motivated in part by a desire to up his status and win trophies with what was one of the best teams in the world at that point.

That he joined a side that had already peaked and would go onto become a bit of a laughing stock across Europe wasn't really his fault. If anything, it seems like Coutinho suffered from a bit of FOMO when rushing in to join Barca but which of us in the cryptosphere can honestly say they haven't been guilty of something similar?

Interestingly then Coutinho's personal narrative has been defined as much by the failings of Barca more generally and possibly the player's inability to live up to such a huge transfer fee even if he did ultimately pay a chunk of it himself.

Let's not forget that just 18 months ago Coutinho was part of a Bayern Munich side that won the Champions League and his loan spell in Germany proved to be his most productive season since leaving Merseyside. I've no doubt that he will return to England with a point to prove under a manager in Steven Gerrard who knows him well.

Anyway, the conversation with @mahirabdullah got me thinking about which other players have paid towards their own transfer fees and here's the list I came up with.

Fernandinho

Another Brazilian and another major transfer that only happened as a result of the player dipping into his own pocket.

Fernandinho was one of Txiki Begiristain's earliest transfer targets when he joined City as a Sporting Director and what a player he has turned out to be for them over the last 9 seasons. However it could have been a very different story with the transfer nearly not happening as his former club Shakhtar Donetsk were in no mood to be bullied by the oil rich Premier League side.

Shakhtar were initially holding out for the full £42.5 million release clause in the Brazilian's contract but City were only willing to pay £30 million before a determined Fernandinho offered to forgo £4million which Shakhtar owed him in order to push the deal through.

4 league titles and 7 domestic cups later, it looks to have been money well spent by one of the best holding midfielders in the history of the Premier League.

Danijel Pranjić

In 2008/09 Pranjić enjoyed a stellar season with SC Heerenveen in the Dutch Eredivisie with the winger netting 16 league goals in total. That return attracted the attentions of Bayern Munich who saw a £7million bid for the Yugoslav international rejected with his current employers holding out for £7.7million.

Pranjic would later claim that when he heard that the deal was about to fall through that he offered to pay the difference to ensure that the transfer could be completed.

During his time with Bayern, Pranjić was more often than not deployed as a full-back and therefore never really had the same impact with the German giants, scoring just once in 55 league appearances across 3 seasons before he was released to Sporting Lisbon in Portugal.

Kirk Broadfoot

Former Rangers and Scotland defender Kirk Broadfoot had helped Kilmarnock to 3rd place in the Scottish Premier Division during the 2018/19 season, their best placed finish for over 50 years.

However, a major falling out with new manager Angelo Alessio during the same summer saw Broadfoot head off to rivals St Mirren in a deal reportedly worth £270k.

That transfer too though didn't last long and when Alessio was sacked by Kilmarnock after just 5 months in charge and as a result Broadfoot was keen to make the move back to Killie.

In his own words Broadfoot stated

Kilmarnock made an approach, St Mirren wouldn't let me go. It went back and forth and I decided to pay the fee to get me here.

"That's how much I wanted to come back and work with Alex and play for the club again.

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Assuming then that the defender's value hadn't fluctuated much over the previous 4 months he must have paid somewhere in the region of a quarter of a million pounds to engineer a return to Kilmarnock.

So there we have it. 4 players who have paid to make dream moves to footballing super clubs Barcelona, Man City, Bayern Munich and ermmm Kilmarnock?

Thanks as always to everyone who interacts and contributes to the Sportstalk community. Your efforts make it easy for me to think of topics to write about as demonstrated above.