If Everton fans were extremely impressed by their club’s capture of James Rodríguez this week, the suggestion they got him on a free only took that to another level.
Foot Mercato were the first to report the news yesterday, claiming that Real Madrid had handed the Colombian ‘on a platter’ to Everton as they were desperate to get rid of him.
That saw them waiving any fee for the midfielder, instead only taking a percentage on a future sale as part of the move.
That is an extremely positive deal for Everton, who have seemingly secured a huge upgrade for their team and a global star, particularly from a marketing perspective, with a much lower outlay than has been reported.
Of course, it all sounded a little bit too good to be true, particularly if you’re Everton, so we took the report with a giant pinch of salt and waited to see what the response would be from Spain.
We had expected a firm rebuttal of it, particularly from Madrid given they’re seemingly coming out of this looking a little bit desperate.
That has not happened, though, and instead, Sport cover the situation today and hint that the report may not be wide of the mark at all.
They report that Real Madrid are going ‘all out’ with their aim of reducing costs and have managed to do that to some extent already.
However, there are still several players on ‘millionaire salaries’ that were proving difficult to get rid of, such as Gareth Bale, Mariano Diaz and James Rodríguez.
The Spanish giants have reached a ‘dead-end’ with their efforts to get rid of such players and faced with the possibility of not selling them, they have changed their policy and are willing to let them go at ‘zero cost’ to save on their wages.
For instance, it’s explained that selling Rodríguez to Everton has saved Madrid €15m in wages this year alone.
In fact, they go into further detail and say that letting Rodríguez go on a free and covering half of Bale’s wages would save them €45m.
Now, we want to make clear that the newspaper does not explicitly state that Real Madrid let Rodríguez go to Everton on a free transfer, instead referring to the report from Foot Mercato.
They do, though, hint that is very much the case with the talk of Madrid changing their policy and how doing so could save them so much money. If it is, Everton’s big signing may have become a whole lot sweeter.
