On Tuesday, among the many stories we wrote about Pelé, we covered two claims from the Portuguese press. One, from A Bola, said Wolverhampton Wanderers are close to signing the player in a €10m deal. The other, from O Jogo, said Benfica were trying to bring him back to Lisbon.
From the big sports newspapers in Portugal, only Record didn’t have a word about the situation, but now they do. Today, they back up A Bola’s information and claim the player should indeed be heading to the Premier League in a €10m move.
Record claims the transfer to Wolves is ‘practically guaranteed’. Both Benfica and Porto had been interested, but none of the clubs showed they would outbid Wolves.
Regarding Benfica, it’s actually a strange situation. When Manchester City signed Ederson from Benfica, Rio Ave owned a share of the goalkeeper. So instead of paying them with money, Benfica found an agreement and sent Pelé to Rio Ave as part of the deal.
But the Lisbon side still kept 50% of Pelé’s shares, and that’s why they could now get him for a small fee, believed to be only €3m.
Now that the race against Wolves is lost, instead of spending €3m to sign the player, they will make money with the sale, getting 50% of the transfer fee.
But Record makes it clear that from the €10m that Wolverhampton will be paying for the player, the clubs lose the percentage that is going to expenses and commissions.
The player’s agent Ulisses Santos gets a part of it, and Jorge Mendes, who is the intermediary in all of this, would obviously not end up with his hands empty either.
