Spanish club presidents promise players before they're elected in charge of the term. How, therefore, can they have an agreement with the club when they aren't even in charge of the team yet? They'll have spoken to the player though and verbally agreed a team. It's why transfers happen nearly instantly when the clubs agree a price.
So. Not. in. every. case. Japp Stam literally left Man United because he publicly outed them for doing this.
Nobody said we gave Genk 2m to be nice, we gave Genk 2m to ensure we got our man early and since we didn't want to go through some long drawn out court case to decide if a release clause was valid or not, nobody did, including Genk. It was a negotiation. Both sides had some leverage, and a price (below market value) was agreed
What I'm saying is nobody cares what we did, clubs do far nastier shit than this and nobody bats an eye lid. You seem to think we'll try to buy a player from a team next year and they'll be like 'no you're the boogeymen who ruined Genks season!', they won't, they'll say 'do you have the cash?' same as every transfer. They wouldn't know, nor would they care, about the outcome of the Belgian league in 2019