Soteldo news has been all over the place.
Here are what has been confirmed to be facts about the original transfer. I've seen so much confusion on how much we own of his rights.
1) We currently own 75% of Soteldo's rights. (Huachipato in Chile, Soteldo's former club, owns the other 25%).
2) Santos only ever owned 50% of his rights.
They bought 50% of his rights from Huachipato.
3) Santos
never paid their original $3.5 million fee to Huachipato.
4) When we bought Soteldo, we bought 50% from Santos and 25% from Huachipato. Those were two separate negotiations. One negotiation with Huachipato. One negotiation with Santos. They did not need to be comparable and proportional values. Apparently
Toronto sent $3 million to each of Santos and Huachipato for their 50% and 25% shares respectively.
5) Santos was facing a transfer ban from FIFA for not paying Huachipato. All of the $6 million fee went to Huachipato.
Santos sent their entire proceeds to Huachipato, plus will pay an additional $500,000 (in installments) - which matches with the reported $3 million Santos got in point 4, plus $500k = $3.5 original fee. The sale covered the never-paid payment and eliminated the transfer ban because they no longer owed another club money.
6) Santos retained a 12.5% sell-on clause on a future Soteldo sale. (So Santos should get a portion of this transfer fee if we sell to Sao Paulo, which they'll probably end up sending to Huachipato again as one of their "installments")
Here are speculations and explanations.
- Sao Paulo wants to buy 50%. We'd remain with 25% (Huachipato still owns 25%) That's not a loan. That's not a sell-on clause. It's asset ownership. See point 4 above. A sell-on clause is what we did with Richie and Nottingham Forest. If Nottingham sells Richie, we get whatever X% we agreed to now - we are not involved in the negotiation. We get whatever X% of what Nottingham negotiates in their sale. If Sao Paulo sells Soteldo, we can negotiate our own price with the buying club for our 25% in a negotiation we are involved in.
-If Sao Paulo *buys* 50%, Soteldo is not our player. It's not a loan. A purchase is a purchase, he would not return to being a TFC player. If it's a *loan* he'd come back, unless it's a loan with an obligation to buy (like PSG with Mbappe, which happens when a team wants to buy a player but due to FFP regulations, they might not be able to buy him this window, so they defer it to next year as a loophole)
-Sao Paulo if offering a contract worth less than the $1.9 million we are paying him. This does
not necessarily mean we have to pay the difference. When there is a transfer, a new contract is written, it's not a straight takeover of the contract. Richie was due to be paid $200,000 by us in 2022. Richie is going to make a hell of a lot more in Nottingham. His TFC contract was ripped up and replaced. Since a new contract gets written, just like a higher salary can be negotiated, theoretically a lower salary can be negotiated as well -
Pique did that for Barcelona (not a transfer, but he still ripped up the old contract and took less)
-With that said, Soteldo is entitled to his current $1.9 million in the sense that he does not have to agree to a transfer. He can stay and he is perfectly entitled to stay with Toronto and collect his $1.9 million. He can say I want $1.9 million. I don't care who pays it, but I want $1.9 million. This is what you hear about all the time where a former team pays part of a player's salary after a transfer. The new team doesn't want to pay his current salary, the player doesn't want to take a lower salary, the old team really wants out of the contract, so they agree to pay the difference between the new and old contract. It's kind of like the Julio Cesar loan here, we only paid a portion of his contract, while QPR paid the balance (although since that was a loan it was still his QPR contract)
Here is my complete speculation and own thoughts based on the whole mess of conflicting and confusing reports (and I could be completely wrong):
-Now if Soteldo really wants out, he might agree to a lower salary. If Sao Paulo is offering say $1 million, Toronto might be telling Soteldo, we're not paying you the 900k. We'll either pay you $1.9 million to play for Toronto or pay you Zero and you go to Sao Paulo. That's the negotiation. How much does he want out? This is what
I think is happening and makes sense given the reports of the "Toronto debt" aka the bonus. Soteldo might be okay with the lower salary to get out of Toronto, if he can get his deferred signing bonus. There is no way Toronto will retain a DP/TAM level salary on the books (which would count to the salary cap and take up space), so Toronto is playing hardball since they know Soteldo wants out. They're probably trying to convince MLS to let that signing bonus count to last year's cap because it's a "signing bonus" so should be allocated to the year of signing.
MLSPA says his base salary is $1.5 million and guaranteed is $1.965 million That $465,000 might be the signing bonuses (it's never been clarified what the difference between base and guaranteed on the MLSPA site).