How did Liverpool sign Luis Diaz on the cheap?
Martin Macdonald
- 31 Jan 2022 21:27 GMT
- 3 min read
Liverpool have completed one of the more surprising deals of the January transfer window with the acquisition of Porto superstar Luis Diaz.
The surprise factor is there as it was generally accepted that the Reds were not going to conduct major business in the winter window, with Jurgen Klopp seemingly happy with his squad after navigating a significant amount of fixtures without Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane and Naby Keita due to their Africa Cup of Nations duties.
In the final days of the window, speculation mounted that Liverpool were looking to bring forward their summer plans by attempting to sign Diaz mid-season.
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The reason that Liverpool ultimately took that decision is that the flying Colombian winger became available at a lower price than previous thought due to Porto's current financial situation.
Diaz had a release clause of €80 million at Porto, but Liverpool managed to secure his services for an initial fee of around €45m which could raise to €59m.
Why did Porto accept a lesser fee?
The ongoing pandemic has hit a number of clubs hard around Europe and Porto are one of the worst impacted.
Porto's failure to qualify for the 2019/20 Champions League group stage hit them further, and the club was subsequently fined by UEFA for Financial Fair Play breaches.
Journalist and Portuguese football expert Aaron Barton of Proxima Jornada explains the financial situation at Porto which led to the Diaz deal.
"Porto had to send proof of payment for €300,000 to UEFA by January 31.
"The one thing that gave Liverpool a massive edge over Tottenham was this up front payment of €8m. That basically arrived at Porto by the time that he's had his medical finished. Any payments that were needed to UEFA or former clubs the owed money, they would use this up-front payment to pay it.
"Liverpool and Porto have built up a nice connection over the past couple of years. They've got some similar staff, the assistant at Liverpool now, Pep Lijnders, used to be at Porto, and Vitor Matos, who coaches at Liverpool in that gap between the academy and the first team, he used to coach at Porto. Then there's the Marko Grujic deal.
"Porto do very well from player sales. They operate very close to the wind, there's a player every year that goes. Last season they made £76m from player sales, the season before that it was £88m, the season before that was £72m, the season before that it was £70m. It is usually around the £70m to £80m mark, but this season after the Luis Diaz deal they are now at £70m. Without that money they are well short.
"They didn't have too many other saleable assets. Players like Vitinha in a couple of years will be going for £40m but they only had young players right now.
"It came at a good time for Liverpool.
"Apparently Tottenham's objectives were a lot more difficult to reach than Liverpool's. So the €15m add-ons for Liverpool are pretty much guaranteed in terms of what these add-ons are for, they are relatively easy to meet."
