Kieran Maguire shares whether Everton will have to pay £10m Dele Alli transfer fee immediately
Kieran Maguire has claimed that should Dele Alli trigger the £10million additional fee from his move from Tottenham to Everton, the Merseyside club will have to pay the fee immediately.
The finance expert was asked whether add-ons in transfer deals can be amortised, as initial fees are, or if they have to be paid straight away, and he used Alli’s move from Spurs to explain that payments would be immediate.
Maguire explained that due to the add-ons having a trigger clause, in this case, the number of appearances the midfielder makes for Everton, the payment would have to be made as one fee.
Speaking on The Price of Football podcast [1 January], Maguire shared: “It very much depends on the wording of the contract, but in the vast majority of instances, there is likely to be an obligating trigger event which means that the buying club now is obliged to pay.
“So I would suspect that it would be recognised immediately rather than being amortised over the remainder of the contract because it tends to relate to a historic event rather than anything to do with the future.
“I think in the case of Dele Alli and his transfer from Spurs to Everton, Everton have to pay an additional sum of money once he has played on 20 occasions. So because that’s looking backwards, you’d have to say they can’t spread that particular cost over the next potential two or three years of his contract.”
No confusion over this one
While it was expected from the start that Everton would have to pay their £10million add-on fee as soon as the clause is triggered, there is now some clarity over whether they would be able to spread those payments over the duration of Alli’s contract.
Transfer fees are often paid this way, as seen especially by Chelsea’s spending, with players on eight-year contracts enabling them to spread large transfer payments over that period of time in a seemingly elaborate way to avoid Financial Fair Play issues.
Those issues are ones Everton have famously found themselves tied up with recently and an additional £10million payment to Tottenham will not be something they are looking forward to paying if that day does come.
With recent updates over Alli’s return to the first-team fold seemingly conflicting, with one from Sean Dyche claiming he was back in training and then more recently saying he is being assessed, it is unclear when, or if, Everton will be made to pay the final bonus.
In other Everton news, Kevin Campbell was left shocked by what happened against Wolves.