This edition first published 2017
© 2017 Alex Duff and Tariq Panja
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ISBN 978-1-119-14542-4 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-119-14545-5 (ebk) ISBN 978-1-119-14544-8 (ebk)
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This book began with a riddle. We wanted to know why a company based in a redbrick house in the English town of Rochdale was lending £2 million to two-time European champion FC Porto to sign a striker. The company listed its address as 35 Princess Street, a scruffy part of town neighbouring abandoned buildings with bricked-up windows, an advice centre for the homeless and a builder's yard. CCTV cameras pointed at the front door.
It was 2010 and the Portuguese club had recently reached the last 16 of Europe's Champions League with a squad that included Radamel Falcão, Givanildo Vieira de Sousa – better known by his nickname of Hulk – and Nicolás Otamendi. Over the next few years these three players, from Colombia, Brazil and Argentina, would subsequently fetch transfer fees totalling more than €150 million and play at some of Europe's most illustrious stadiums, including Manchester United's Old Trafford and Manchester City's Etihad Stadium, a dozen or so miles away from that ordinary Rochdale house.
As the new season got underway, Porto used the £2 million loan to help finance the signing of a striker to provide cover for Falcão and Hulk. Walter da Silva, who had been raised by his mother in a Brazilian slum, was very much an unproven talent, even if he had made his debut in Brazil's Under-20 national team a year earlier.
A second company, based in London's Chancery Lane, provided another €2 million to help finance the €6 million signing. Porto's published accounts showed that this company had acquired 25 % of the transfer rights of the striker. That meant it would take a quarter of any fee the striker fetched if Porto traded him to another team before his five-year contract expired.
If Da Silva went on to became as sought-after as Falcão, Hulk and Otamendi, it could turn into a lucrative investment. Although it took us three years of digging to find out who the owners of both companies were, it was clear from the start what they were doing: seeking financial returns from the football player transfer market.
Transfer fees have been part of the game since 1890, when they were introduced by the English Football Association to compensate smaller teams for losing their best players to larger clubs. Back then, there was already fierce competition among English clubs for the best talent and the manager of Preston North End, then one of the leading teams, tempted amateur players from the Scottish dockyards with money and jobs such as running a pub.
Transfer fees took longer to catch on in Italy, Spain and Germany, but were later adopted worldwide by the sport's world ruling body, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). FIFA regulates the thousands of cross-border transfers that take place each year.
