Roma-based club Lazio delivered payments for two players to the wrong club due to name similarities.
There is little we haven’t heard before in the football world, but this one is definitely new. Lazio’s financial department made a terrible mistake by listing payments for two former players to the wrong club.
The transfers in question involved current Wolves players Pedro Neto and Bruno Jordao. Both Portuguese footballers arrived in Rome back in 2017 on loan from Sporting de Braga with mandatory purchase clauses. However, when the time came to perform the first payments, Lazio sent €11 million for Pedro Neto to Sporting Clube de Portugal (also known as Sporting Lisbon).
“I would like to clarify that Lazio bought both the players (Pedro Neto & Bruno Jordao) from Sporting Club Braga and not from Sporting Club de Portugal [Sporting Lisbon]. Unfortunately, it was a mistake made by our financial department that was deceived by the similar names of the clubs,” Armando Calveri told The Guardian. As you well know, SC de Portugal never registered the players. We will adjust our balances by specifying the notes related to the two cases.”
Lazio and Braga also disagreed on the transfer values.
The Guardian’s investigation also brought to light a few discrepancies between the money paid for Pedro Neto and Bruno Jordao. Lazio has stated payments surrounding the fee of €11 million for Neto, while Braga registered the amount of €9.5 million. When the deal was agreed between the two clubs, Braga stated they would receive €12 million. In fact, there was even the possibility to reach €17 million with add-ons.
When asked to comment on the matter, Calveri attributed the confusion to the confidential aspect of the transaction.
“As you can understand, all the financial information related to the player’s transfer is confidential and it makes things more mysterious. But in this case, the imagination exceeds reality. Your ‘investigation’ is misled by the different fiscal approach adopted by the two clubs, probably. All the amounts related to the transfer are declared into Fifa TMS [transfer matching system] that protects transparency in the financial transactions between clubs.”
Nevertheless, Braga released their financial information back in 2017. They claimed to have received €17 million for Pedro Neto and €8.5 million for Bruno Jordao.
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