Tottenham likely to get screwed out of sell-on clause

As many of you know, I'm part of FMF State of Mind, a Mexican football blog. I figured I'd pass along a story from that site (and Villarreal USA) that's relevant to Tottenham Hotspur, regarding Giovani dos Santos. Unsurprisingly, he has a sell-on clause, which is how Mallorca were able to get him so cheap. While Gio had a very good season in La Liga last year, Mallorca got relegated and are looking to sell him. Yay, payday! Right? Wrong.

See, Villarreal are trying to sign two Mallorca players, much like Monaco signed two players from FC Porto. To avoid paying a lot of money to Sporting Lisbon, who stood to make a lot of money on a sell-on clause that they had for Joao Moutinho, Porto sold Moutinho to Monaco for far below market value and James Rodriguez for far above market value. This allowed them to pull in the same total fee, but while having to pay less to Sporting.

Mallorca is trying to do the same thing with Gio and Tomas Pina. Take it away, Villarreal USA.

Reports suggest that Pina's transfer could be for up to €5 million, but everything depends on the Giovani dos Santos situation. If Mallorca wants to stiff Tottenham, then both players need to go to the same club. Pina's arrival should give us a leg up, but the islanders are pesky negotiators.

And here's what I said about that over at FMF State of Mind.

Gio has a sell-on clause, meaning Tottenham Hotspur will get a portion of any potential sale. If Villarreal can get a deal done with Gio, they'll likely pay a large fee for Pina and a small fee for Gio. How that works, I have no idea. One would think that, since Pina has already signed, his fee is set. I'm not sure how "signing Giovani dos Santos" can be written into a contract as an incentive/fee escalator, but I'm sure they figured out a legal way to pull this off.

This is shady and it sucks, but there's nothing to stop them from doing it. It's almost certainly legal. Them's the breaks. We could have made a few million off this transfer, but we'll probably end up getting pocket change.