Rosell on the signing of Neymar: "We paid 17 million and his thing was to wait six months and have paid zero"

The former president of FC Barcelona, ​​Sandro Rosell, has assured that they only paid 17 million euros for Neymar because they advanced his signing by six months.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
28 October 2022 Friday 05:34
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Rosell on the signing of Neymar: "We paid 17 million and his thing was to wait six months and have paid zero"

The former president of FC Barcelona, ​​Sandro Rosell, has assured that they only paid 17 million euros for Neymar because they advanced his signing by six months. Thus he has justified the low price of the transfer that they signed to Santos for the Brazilian. “We only advanced the contract six months. He paid 17 and his thing was to wait six months and have paid zero, "Rosell stressed. The former president has declared in the penultimate session of the trial for the signing of the Brazilian for which the prosecution is asking for five years in prison for fraud and corruption between individuals, considering that he maneuvered with undercover payments to the Neymar family to save the payment of the 40% of the federal rights held by the DIS fund. The club had reached an agreement with the player in 2011 so that the footballer would wear a Barça shirt in 2014, once his contract with Santos ended, but Rosell explained that the then coach Tito Vilanova, when he was admitted to a clinic in New York, asked them to anticipate the arrival of Neymar. "We came from a very winning dynamic, but he said that we had to put something before a losing dynamic came. And as he knew that we had agreed to Neymar, he said that it would be good for Barça to advance him a year", he recalled. However, the former president has assured that he was not part of the negotiation but only set the economic limits” to Raúl Sanllehí, who is the one who directly led the transfer talks.

The Prosecutor's Office considers that to the 17 million that Barça paid for Neymar, two contracts that the club signed with Santos worth 6.8 million must be added for other concepts that actually corresponded to the transfer of the Brazilian. One, of 7.9 for a preferential right with respect to three soccer players from the Santos youth academy. Rosell has justified the signing of those agreements, saying that "they are superfrequent operations in the world of football" in which there are teams that are looking for emerging stars in other countries. Another of the contracts that the prosecutor sees as suspicious is an agreement to hold two friendly matches between Santos and FC Barcelona.One of them was in the Joan Gamper trophy, which was done, and another planned in Brazil but for which "no dates were found", according to Rosell.

Rosell's board agreed to pay 40 million euros with Neymar's father once the contract with Santos ended and he landed in Barcelona, ​​an operation similar to "paying a deposit for a flat", the former president has exemplified. Later, however, they paid an additional 7.6 million commission to Neymar when the transfer was anticipated, but Rosell considers that it is not computable for the transfer. “You pay him more because he is the one who has become good”, he has justified. In addition, during the twenty minutes that his interrogation lasted, he has also disassociated Josep Maria Bartomeu from the transfer negotiation.

The former president's signature appeared on one of the contracts. The Prosecutor's Office does not accuse him but DIS does, which asks for five years in prison for him. In his very brief statement, he stressed that he did not participate in the negotiations and that he signed them because the club's protocol established that the signature of a manager responsible for the area and the president was needed. “I did not participate in the negotiations. When the negotiations were finished and the contracts were agreed as sports vice president, I signed the contracts”.

The session began with the statement as a witness by José Domingo Barral, former presidents of the business conglomerate to which the DIS company belonged, in which he stated that Barça "paid a bribe" to the Neymars to obtain the footballer's services and that the payment of 17 million euros seemed strange to him when up to 70 million had been offered for the footballer. Barral has gone further and has insinuated that Neymar did not perform as he should in the match between Santos and Barça in the Intercontinental Cup due to his agreement with the Barça club. “In that game it seemed strange to us because it seemed that Neymar was not playing. He limited himself to greeting the Barcelona players. And the president of Santos was invited after the game to spend Christmas with his five daughters paid for by Barcelona.