On Wednesday, Record claimed that Chelsea were willing to pay Victor Lindelof’s release clause at Benfica. For an amount of €30m, the London club would be able to sign the defender without even wasting time to negotiate with the Portuguese club.
But the newspaper has another article today saying that Benfica won’t make things easy to sign the 22-year-old. In fact, they will do everything they can to keep the player.
You must be thinking: “But Chelsea only need to pay the release clause, Benfica can’t do much about that.”
Well, apparently, they can.
According to Record, it’s all up to the taxes. Normally, when the buying club pays for the release clause, the selling side will get the money and declare it, so they end up having to pay a percentage of it to the IRS.
But the law is reportedly on Benfica’s side, so they have the right to receive the money for the taxes too. It would happen if they demand the player to pay the clause, not the buying club.
That would mean a raise of around €6m or €7m in the transfer’s total value, so Benfica could keep the entire release clause amount.
This is considered to be a bad way of treating a player, and Benfica only considered to do it once, when Jan Oblak left for Atletico Madrid. Even then, they ended up giving up and accepting the Spanish side to pay for only the release clause.
We’re not buying this, similar has been claimed with Spanish release clauses previously, and, at worst, the tax is then reclaimable as an expense.
Record claims that Benfica have received no bids so far, but Lindelof’s agent has already told them the Chelsea’s interest to pay the clause. A formal bid is expected to arrive at any time.
Rather than any tax tricks holding Chelsea up, a more likely way of this transfer collapsing is it turning out the club really has no interest and it’s all been a trick to up the player’s profile.
