Sunderland couldn’t get Geny Catamo in the summer, but their pursuit looks set to earn the winger a pretty decent consolation prize.
Sporting are preparing a significant pay rise for the 25-year-old and, for the first time, we now have numbers attached to that plan.
Catamo currently earns around €1.4m (£1.2m) gross per year. Sporting want to increase that to around €2m (£1.74m). That’s a rise of roughly 43%.
Nice work if you can get it, although it still doesn’t come close to what Sunderland had waiting for him.
Sunderland offer still on another level
Previous reports in Portugal had Sunderland offering Catamo around €3m (£2.6m) net per season. At the time, A Bola explained that this would have multiplied his take-home salary by five.
Correio da Manhã, along with the new Sporting wages, now puts Sunderland’s proposal at €5m (£4.35m) per year. The difference appears to be down to gross and net figures, with the newspaper using gross numbers when discussing Catamo’s Sporting salary.
Either way, the gap remains huge. Surely Sporting won’t even try to match Sunderland’s offer. Instead, they want to reward Catamo after keeping him despite the serious interest from England.
The new salary would also put him alongside some of Sporting’s better-paid players.
| Stat | 2025/26 | 2026/27 so far |
|---|---|---|
| Appearances | 47 | 8 |
| Minutes played | 3,145 | 599 |
| Goals | 8 | 2 |
| Assists | 3 | 3 |
| Goal contributions | 11 | 5 |
New deal taking shape
The salary is the main new detail, while the rest of Sporting’s plan is becoming increasingly clear. Catamo currently has a contract until 2029, and Sporting want to add another two years to take him through to 2031.
They also intend to try to raise his €60m (£52m) release clause to €80m (£69.4m).
Those talks had already started, with Sporting keen to get everything sorted well before the January window.
Correio da Manhã also points out that Aston Villa showed interest in Catamo during the summer, although Sunderland were the club to push hardest for his signing.
Either way, the Black Cats couldn’t give Catamo that fivefold pay rise themselves. Their summer pursuit, though, appears to have helped him secure a sizeable one in Lisbon.
