Ever since it was reported that Santos sold their wonderkid Deivid Washington to Chelsea, club president Andrés Rueda has been heavily criticised.
One of the reasons is because they’re in a delicate situation where they need all their players, and it’s also been said that they accepted the first offer that arrived.
As Rueda was interviewed today by local outlet A Tribuna, he was directly asked about the deal with Chelsea and the reason why he took it.
There was a question about how much the Blues are paying for Deivid Washington, with the journalist asking if that’s €16m up front plus €4m in bonuses.
“It’s a little more, €17m in cash and €3m for bonuses, but bonuses that we can call mandatory, because they are all achievable,” Andrés Rueda told A Tribuna.
The president also explained why they had to sell Deivid Washington even though he has so few games for the first team.
“It was already known, it was in the planning, that we would need to sell at least two players to balance the club’s accounts. That wouldn’t have happened if Marcos Leonardo had been sold, then Deivid wouldn’t have been sold, but it took a while for Marcos’ proposal to arrive.
“It arrived at the very end, when the window was already on the verge of closing. So we had to take action and opted to sell Deivid. Football has a lower revenue than expenditure. If you start today with zero commitments, a year from now you will have a deficit of R$80, R$100 million. How do you cover? Selling players, there’s no way.”
Chelsea and Santos are still to officially announce Deivid Washington’s move to Stamford Bridge, but the player himself has already confirmed he’s going.
On Tuesday evening, the striker made a post on Instagram confirming that he’s leaving the Brazilian side, and promising to be back in the future.
