Former Leeds United manager Jesse Marsch has reignited debate around Manchester City\u2019s finances after questioning how the club secured Erling Haaland for $66 million (\u00a352 million) in 2022.<\/p>\n
Speaking to The Guardian, Marsch, now the Canada boss, did not hold back as he looked back on the controversy surrounding City. \u201cI think Man City should be punished severely,\u201d Marsch said. \u201cI think they should have to go down, and by the way, everyone knew about it. Everyone knew.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat summer [2022], us and Man City were the only teams that said we made money. For us, we did make money, because we sold Raphinha, we sold Kalvin Phillips. We had a lot left over from what we bought. At the time, we weren\u2019t in a position financially to not save. Our ownership didn\u2019t have deep pockets. Whereas when Man City says this, I was literally like, \u2018Are you kidding me? Is this some kind of joke?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they said they got Erling Haaland for \u00a352 million, it\u2019s like: \u2018Yeah, O.K., sure!\u2019 So, I knew there were inconsistencies in it, but what can you do? You just put your arms in the air and go, \u2018This is football.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Haaland\u2019s move stood out in a summer when Manchester United signed Antony in a deal worth $99 million (\u00a385 million), Darwin N\u00fa\u00f1ez joined Liverpool for a similar figure and Alexander Isak moved from Real Sociedad to Newcastle United for $71 million (\u00a360 million).<\/p>\n
The explanation, however, was straightforward. Haaland had a release clause in his contract at that value, and reports suggested it only became active in the summer of 2022. City moved swiftly to get ahead of the competition.<\/p>\n
The striker had also been wanted by Chelsea 12 months earlier. Sky in Germany reported that a swap bid involving either Tammy Abraham or Callum Hudson-Odoi failed, while other reports claimed Chelsea were prepared to spend close to \u00a3135 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat would be a lot of money for one player,\u201d Haaland said at the time.<\/p>\n
Dortmund had no legal requirement to sell him in 2021, but the following summer the release clause changed everything. \u201cIn the end, the truth is that we gave him a release clause, otherwise he would have gone to Manchester United,\u201d former Dortmund executive Hans-Joachim Watzke said.<\/p>\n
The official fee was \u00a352 million, but that figure did not tell the full story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marsch questioned City\u2019s Haaland deal, saying the transfer raised obvious inconsistencies in 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21459,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-city","category-epl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}