It was of course a reason to celebrate when Flamengo managed to sign Andreas Pereira from Manchester United on a loan deal this summer.
Brazilian sides aren’t used to receiving young players from Europe, so that was considered a very good deal made by the Rio de Janeiro club.
The agreement with the Red Devils, however, also included a buying option of €20m, and to do that, Flamengo would need to break their transfer record.
That still belongs to the purchase of Gabriel Barbosa, who first had a loan where he scored 43 goals in one year, and only then was signed permanently from Inter.
That means that Andreas would need to play on a very high level to convince the club to invest that much money, and following his good appearances in his first months, the rumours about his stay started coming out.
So as Flamengo’s vice-president of finance Rodrigo Tostes was interviewed by Globo Esporte, the Manchester United player was a topic in the conversation, and the official made it clear that if necessary, the club would have the money to make the signing.
“I don’t know if Flamengo are going to buy him or not, it’s not even being discussed internally yet, there’s a huge deadline for us to look at this,” Rodrigo Tostes told Globo Esporte.
“What I can say is: Do Flamengo have the capacity to buy an athlete worth €20m today? Totally. There’s certainly the potential for that.”
“There is no lack of people wanting to lend money to Flamengo, they can generate this revenue. But a series of other factors need to be considered, which you will have to give up in order to eventually be able to make this investment. Now, buying potential, we bought Pedro now for €14m. Are Flamengo able to buy another €20m athlete? Totally. Now, what has to be studied is whether this makes sense within the logic I explained to you, this positive spiral of having a super winning team and this team continuing, creating related revenues, being able to continue making investments, and not putting all the investment inside a basket, for example.”
“Are Flamengo able to buy an athlete worth €30m? They have conditions. But then the athlete gets hurt. This is what football planning points out. So it’s not a matter of financial planning, it’s much bigger planning done by football, with finance, with the club president. If you take Flamengo’s investment in recent years in athlete purchases, it’s much bigger than €20m a year. So, they are able to buy. The question is whether it makes sense within this strategy that was set up.”
Andreas Pereira has three goals and one assist in 13 appearances for Flamengo so far.
In case the club decide not to buy him until the next summer, his contract with Manchester United runs until 2023.
