Claim club only sold player to Wolves to reduce debt – Came from ‘pressure on the treasury’

Matheus Nunes’ transfer from Sporting to Wolverhampton Wanderers this summer is today a big subject in a story brought by Portuguese newspaper Record.

The outlet today featured an interview with Nuno Correia da Silva, who used to represent Holdimo, the company who iss the biggest share owner at the Lions, apart from the fans.

And even though you’d expect the conversation to have several topics, a rather large part of it was regarding Nunes’ transfer to Wolves, which is labelled as ‘controversial’ by Record.

It all started with them asking Silva if if ‘disagreed’ with the sale.

“It depends on the moment. This approach started in May and the coach understood that it was possible to make the sale, compensating with acquisitions and adjustments,” Silva told Record.

“I agreed in May, but when the sale is made, we should have reconsidered. And said so. There was no time to decide but I understood that the coach should have been called and consulted before it happened.”

“Then we have to be fair; I hate injustice. The administration did what the coach told us to do. In other words, he went looking for the players that the coach understood that compensated for the departure of Matheus Nunes. The truth is, it wasn’t working. And if not, we should have reconsidered.”

Silva then explained that Sporting’s decision to sell Nunes to Wolves had to do with their decision to buy the VMOCs, which are the shares from their debts they have with Portuguese banks.

He claims there was pressure from the club’s treasury to do that.

“There was treasury pressure due to the options that were taken. Because Sporting, SAD, allocated around €20m to Sporting Clube de Portugal. I doubt that this option was taken at the right time. Sporting decided to buy the VMOCs and convert them into shares. There were then mechanisms for transferring money from SAD to Sporting to buy SAD’s own shares, and this had an impact on the treasury.”

“The sale of Matheus Nunes had to do with the purchase of the VMOC, yes.”

Matheus Nunes left Sporting to join Wolves for €45m. The player, who’d already been linked to other Premier League clubs, was indeed having impressive performances for the Lions, and the local media’s reaction sounds like they believe the Lisbon should’ve sold him for more.