Tough call for Giovinco, stay where you're happy and make excellent money or go the unknown and double your money. This is his last big contract in football. I'm sure his head has been turned by the offer from saudi. I'm sure his family would much rather stay here and it's not like he's getting paid peanuts if he stays.
Hmm...we seem to have a bit more clarity.
Saudi team offers $10 mill but no transfer fee or very little - TFC shuts it down.
TFC offers $4 mil +. Seba not happy.
Agent gets word to Kloke/ Tenorio.
TFC gets word to everybody else.
Still wondering how the leg injury aspect works out in all this.
mysterious injuries typically seem to happen in this kinds of moments. They are parking him until it is resolved. I don't think he actually wants to go to Saudi but is using it to negotiate. I hope TFC can give a little this week so everyone saves face and we keep him. Good that it is now all in the open. Very likely that there will be certainty one way or another very soon.Originally Posted by OgtheDim
Last edited by MightyDM; 01-29-2019 at 09:40 AM.
Considering all the info we have, I think the leg injury is/was an excuse to get a "physical" done in the US without causing too much noise over a potential transfer.
I know these things are normally done after its a completed deal, but if $10M/yr salary is given out, I'd want to be 100% sure there's no chance of damaged goods coming over.
I thought it was reasonable until he said “and we didn’t make playoffs last year”. Well no shit, do you think that really is on your best player? We had tons of injuries and your former GM popped his pants on several million plus signings. Loook in the mirror.
Can anyone elaborate on bonus structure? Here's my offer.
3 years 5.5 m per
500k bonus at 17 goals
1 million bonus at 23 goals
250k bonus at 15 assists
250k bonus at 2500 minutes played
I like it. Tie in bonuses (if allowed) to any contract to get him more $. At 32 he is no spring chicken. He gets bounced around a lot as the league is physical. Last year proved that injuries to our over 30 year old players were common.
The comment about not making the playoffs was probably just him re-telling what his boss said to him when he asked for the money to keep Seba. That is how I read it. If looking at it purely from a bean counter point of view that would be a valid point. Of course this shouldn’t be handled as purely a bean counter thing because he is their marketing tool as well. His name is everywhere when it comes to TFC.
I am very glad Manning has made Seba a real offer.
He went higher than I would have, if that was a three year offer (term is pretty important to evaluating these proposals)
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
So Seba would have to pay the transfer fee himself to buy out his contract.
Deduct $4-6m from what he gets from the Saudi club. The difference isn't as large then. They could do something if both sides bend a bit.
MLS is a tough, physical league, that emphasizes speed, and features plastic fields, grueling travel, extreme weather, and incompetent refs. - NK Toronto
My guess is the Saudi's pay TFC $5-6M and Seba is gone.
Too much water under the bridge now.
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
Molinaro was suggesting our price tag is a little more than double that.
Assuming the offer here is $5 million USD, that's $2.5 million after-tax in Canada. If the offer is $10 million Euros in Saudi Arabia, that's $11.4 million USD and I don't think there's income tax there. That means we're comparing $2.5 million to $11.4 million per year, which is a massive gap. For those playing the lifestyle card, it's valid - he loves it here from all accounts - but he can probably live in an ex-pat community with armed guards for 3 years, pocket $27 million USD after-tax (!) more than he would have made here, and retire wherever he wants with his young family at age 35 or 36.
I think this is a messy exit, it will be hard to swim through all this turmoil to a placid TFC season. and Giovinco should grab the Saudi offer.
Those Giovinco fans who do not feel comfortable with Seba shouldering blame for TFC not making the playoffs should be aware that other TFC fans do think the sour 2018 season HAS to be a factor in TFC's stance. Giovinco on overboil of passion was too often his most memorable contribution....
Probably somewhere in the middle then. 5 to 10 million usd is doable for a Saudi team, Although they historically haven't paid huge, extortionate fees like China were paying for a while, they would be able to cover in that range. Other teams have paid more than that for lesser known players albeit younger than Giovinco.
Which is why I think it’s over. Seba is gone.
Maybe TFC will get their 10M, who knows, but that ask doesn’t make a ton of sense when Seba has only six months left on the contract.
That demand just hardens Seba's position that the team is hard lining him and/or dicking him around. Vazquez didn’t get this treatment. Seba must be pissed about that.
How does he come back into the team after that?
This transfer negotiation is pretty standard jockeying, once the thing is all but done. Chelsea and Monaco just went through a couple of weeks of this on Fabregas.
Last edited by ensco; 01-29-2019 at 11:27 AM.
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
We can't come remotely close to matching the offer from Saudi Arabia, nor should we.
This is one of those instances where management has to be prudent as it's not a level playing field.
Now that we have more info, I actually think both sides are being pretty reasonable, and it wouldn't make much sense for either side to move much from their stances, given the circumstances and other options. Realizing each side is probably also putting out a message which makes their position sound more reasonable. E.g., is it really 10 million Euros guaranteed for 3 years from the Saudi team, not performance-based for example, or a club option for a part of that, etc.? There is no way to prove anything about that. It would make sense for Seba's agent to exaggerate the offer, to make it sound like they're willing to turn down an amazing deal for a "slightly" better offer from TFC.
Manning on the other hand says: with their new offer he would still be "one of the 6 or 7 top earners in the league." There's easily a $2 million per year slush factor in a statement like that.
Only issue is, I wish this somehow could have been resolved earlier and more quietly. It seems that TFC just wanted to sit this out & avoid the issue; the management change (Bez) probably didn't help either. That's not really reasonable in world football. Seba and his agent, on the other hand, may have been too public & too early (going public 1.5 years before contract end, during a crappy season, is a bit early for MLS, IMO). Plus the agent may have gone for the highest possible offer, instead of looking for a more reasonable offer from a place where Seba would actually want to live & play.
So now the transfer fee comes into play at the end, instead of at the beginning. Plus instead of making a decision one way or another last November, nobody knows what's going to happen a few weeks before CCL starts, with a major impact on available budget, and the whole team shape & strategy. Never mind starting to look for & negotiate with possible replacement players (incl. for Vazquez), team cohesion, etc. It also gives more reasons for all the recent departures: anybody within the club could see there was lots of uncertainty coming their way.
Last edited by Auzzy; 01-29-2019 at 11:34 AM.
Keep hearing the mentions of the option for 2020 so it's still out there. They never mention team or player option but I assume team.
Kristian Jack mentioned on his twitter that it is a mutual option for 2020 (both sides have to agree)
Toronto FC,#CMNT & #CWNT, Scotland, Heart of Midlothian FC, Tottenham Hotspur FC
"The Harder the Struggle, The Greater the Reward" - @OsoJ92AWAY DAYS - CHICAGO August 2017, MONTREAL March 2018
So it’s essentially nothing.
to summarize: we offer $4/5, Saudi’s offer $10 and Gio says he’d want ~$7 to stay. All deals suggested to be 3 yrs. transfer fee still tbd. At least I think that’s what i’m reading.
It’s tough to call anybody unreasonable here if those are indeed the facts.
Saudi's supposedly offering 10 million Euros not $... ???
Management can't seriously be underestimating the effect this has on bums in seats. No Vazquez, no Seba who the hell is gonna come out and watch this team? Someone said it above and maybe these small market guys don't understand that that shit won't fly in Toronto. Have 2010-2013 taught them nothing
3 steps forward 5 steps backwards with this team.
It will only have an effect if no one new is brought in and we struggle. If we get a few players and do well then it'll all be forgotten. Winning does that in this city. For example the swath of folks dropping the Raptors because they traded DeRozan. How's that going now?
indeed
As long as good replacements can be brought in and the team becomes competitive again people will show up. Atlanta doesn't have Giovinco or Vasquez and still pack a stadium twice the size of ours. Players come and go. Get used to it.
Pretty rare example though. You can go through the sports history of multiple teams in Toronto's history who haven't achieved any where near a successful result with such a transition, the Jays being the best example. Plus we aren't talking about trading Seba for Mata; we are talking about letting him go in an unplanned way and maybe picking someone else up. Possibly. Maybe.
nah.players are mercenaries,what would you do if you were offered twice, three times the money or the prez job in your home town.
my concern is how do we replace these guys.
I generally agree... however, these are two different markets at two different stages in franchise history. The fan base at large in Toronto has made it pretty clear just because it flies somewhere else doesn’t mean we will accept it.
I’d be happy with designated players in the mould of what they have. However, I caution anyone who can’t differentiate that from run-of-the-mill MLS DP strategies that might look similar from the outside. They are paying far more in transfer fees than most MLS teams.
i think we have reached the peak for ticket sales with seba,its all about winning.losing team 20k..winning team 27k to sellouts
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