Last week we covered claims from France that Everton actually signed James Rodriguez on a free transfer.
It had been widely reported the Premier League club would be paying €25m for the Colombian, but FootMercato insisted the Toffees ‘did not spend a single Euro’ to complete the deal… at least in terms of transfer fee.
Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf seem to back that up on Monday. As they cover Everton’s good start to the season, Marcel Brands’ transfer business is looked at and it’s explained he’s done really well from a cost perspective.
The sporting director got Napoli and Watford to reduce their prices for Allan and Abdoulaye Doucouré, yet De Telegraaf say the ‘most sensational’ piece of business was signing James on a ‘free transfer’.
Last week’s claims stated Real Madrid are entitled to a percentage of a future transfer fee, and were happy to get the player’s wages off their accounts.Interestingly, there’s been no big denial on this from the media closest to Madrid, they’re largely just ignoring the free transfer claim.
