By Andrew Warshaw
September 12 – The president of one of Portugal’s leading clubs has lashed out at Third Party Ownership despite the country being one of those where the practise is commonplace.
TPO, which many countries outlaw and which FIFA and UEFA are seriously trying to address, was hotly debated at the Soccerex Convention in Manchester this week and came to a head during a panel involving Sporting Lisbon whose controversial sale of Marcos Rojo to Manchester United rumbles on.
An offshore company called Doyen Sports, a fund with undeclared investors and owners based in Malta, owned 75% of the Argentina defender’s economic rights while he was at Sporting, holding up his move to Old Trafford.
Sporting president Bruno de Carvalho (pictured) was involved in a heated exchange during his panel session and afterwards pulled reporters together to make clear he was totally against TPO even though it is allowed to flourish in Portugal, Spain and South America where it is most rife.
It is rare for a club embroiled in TPO to provide such hard-hitting, insightful detail but De Carvalho, a lifelong supporter who only became Sporting president in March 2013, wanted to stress that Sporting are refusing to fulfil the contract the club signed with Doyen.
“Now it is a monster – a monster that is living in almost all the clubs taking care of the players, so now I cannot see how only regulating it is the solution,” he said of TPO. “We need to have a discussion very seriously with everybody very quickly.”
De Carvalho, who said he had already repaid Doyen the £3.2 million it invested in Rojo, insisted he would fight to prevent the company getting its hands on any more of the transfer funds.
He argues that the contracts the club signed under the previous management were in breach of FIFA regulations and claimed Sporting did not want to sell Rojo but that Doyen offered the player over the club’s head.
“One of the rules is that the funds cannot be engaging with the management and not manipulating the management, and they did it,” De Carvalho said. “That contract means manipulation. It means engagement with the management. It’s not a contract – it’s null.
“When I arrived at the club I had a lot of players that were ‘in funds’. Nobody can run a club with five per cent of a player, 10, 20, because our business is this: to have results and to sell players.
“How can I compete? It is fair for me to compete with someone that doesn’t spend a dime with players and then is fighting with me to be champion?”
Asked what he knew about Doyen, Carvalho replied: “I don’t know. Maybe they need to say in court because we are making a case against them. But what I am telling you is they are making a lot of business in Portugal and I don’t think this is fair for the truth in sport.
“This is not football. I am against funds where we don’t know where the money is coming from, and who try to manipulate football.”
A spokesman for Doyen was quoted as responding: “We operate in an open and transparent way and we welcome regulation in this sector. We categorically do not manage or influence the player and we ensure that is written into every contract we have with the club.
“In the case of Sporting Lisbon, that is now a matter for our lawyers who are taking action. This is the first ever issue we have had and it’s with a specific president who now wants to renege on a bona fide contract that his club have signed. We welcome taking the matter to court.”
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