Fábio Silva’s move from Porto to Wolverhampton Wanderers continues to be a controversial topic in the Portuguese media.
This week, the Dragons released an official document revealing that from the €40m paid by Wolves for the player, €10m of it would be going to intermediaries.
This share of 25% obviously caught the eyes of the media. Even though local newspaper O Jogo is pretty quiet about it, Lisbon-based outlet Record continues to explore the subject.
Back on Thursday, they explained that from the €10m, €7m would go to Gestifute and the other €3m to STV. The reason is that these companies intermediated the last contracts that Fábio Silva signed for Porto, and their reward was only paid with the transfer to Wolves.
Now Record managed to interview the three other candidates that Porto had for the presidency this year, and most of them obviously attacked the way president Pinto da Costa handled this sale.
José Fernando Rio said: “A 25 percent commission is a huge exaggeration. This only happens because on the one hand there’s a very strong businessman and, on the other, a weakened club, which makes it vulnerable to accepting this type of scandalous commissions. In the beginning it was an excellent deal, €40m, now it’s only more or less. FC Porto has spent some money on signings and I think it’s good to reinforce the team.”
These were the words from Fernando Lobo: “We’ll receive around 29 million. So much fuss about the fantastic deal and it wasn’t like that after all. FC Porto urgently needs money and I understand that, but I’m revolted by the fact that Jorge Mendes and his intermediaries are taking advantage of the economic and financial fragility of FC Porto. Today, we have the luxury of giving, in quotes, 10 million euros.”
Finally, this is what Miguel Brás da Cunha said: “At the moment, the information is still vague. There was a statement, but there will be detailed explanations behind this data and we will only comment then. FC Porto has to position itself in the market with whom it operates in, namely Jorge Mendes. It’s a normal relationship. The movements in the market have been within the team’s needs.”
