Sometimes, the hardest part is maintaining the pretence.
When it comes to transfer release clauses, everyone in football knows the deal. They’re just not really allowed to acknowledge it.
“There was one deal fairly recently and a club came to us to enquire about the value of a player,” a recruitment source tells i.
“He was a very good player who had a clear idea of his career progress – he had interest from higher up but wanted to move up one level before going to the next one. And that meant he was someone we could only have signed if we agreed to put a release clause in the contract.
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In a transfer window that is often strained by the dualling priorities of selling clubs to extract maximum value and buying clubs to secure bargains, recruitment sources believe the release clause is the “secret weapon” of deal makers. And they’re predicting a few more big transfers will be driven by them before deadline day.
Newcastle, the transfer window’s most aggressive movers so far, are understood to be actively targeting players with set release clauses because of the high prices they’ve been quoted. And a recruitment source who spoke to i said some clubs in Europe are advertising the release clauses of their players to initiate quick deals to alleviate their strained financial circumstances.
The release clause – in this case – is a good PR move for the selling club. “They can turn to their fans and say ‘We did all we could’,” a source explained.
There’s no definitive list of players with them in their contract but it’s estimated somewhere between 30 or 40 players in the top two divisions are sitting on release clauses.
Some have been inserted by clubs to protect market value while others are insisted on by the player but the savviest negotiators leave them deliberately vague, which leaves clubs with some room to work in.
“The fee might be £40million, but you’ve got room to negotiate on the payment schedule. You can turn down a £40million offer if it’s four payments of £10million and you want it all up front,” a source explains.
The really opaque part of release clauses is how they emerge. Football’s a small world so they’re bound to get out, but they’re usually signed with requests to keep them confidential.
Of course that rarely happens. But agents can’t be seen to overtly leaking them on the open market for fear of breaking the terms of a contract.
Sometimes clubs use release clauses to bargain down a player’s negotiating hand in wage talks – and it backfires on them.
Demba Ba recalls using clauses to advance his career in a quid pro quo agreement with clubs who were worried about a historic knee injury.
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“I didn’t have a dodgy knee. It was only the press who said that but it stuck with me,” he said.
“When I first came to England to sign for West Ham they said that if my knee breaks down, I’m automatically out of contract. I said: ‘OK, but if you do that at your end, can I do something at my end?’ My clause was if the club go down, I can leave on a free.
“I went to Newcastle and I wanted to play there. But it was not a great contract. So if you’re going to do something like half of my wages on pay-as-you-play then I will ask for a release clause.
“They decided on £7million for the release clause, not me. Then this is the offer they got for me.”
In Wood’s case, the release clause was inserted without him or Burnley ever believing a club like Newcastle would come knocking.
“It’s a pretty standard thing,” he explained on Thursday. “Some people have them, some people don’t.
“I don’t think that anyone thought this one would be triggered ever but that’s the way of the world. And the way football can be at times.”
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