Negotiating Out of "Minimum Fee Release Clauses"

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huwb85

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Hope someone can help here.

I'm Hyde FC and we've been doing alright in 2019-2020 season in the prem, qualified for Euro Cup last season and trying to push for a Champions League place.

The problem is my rep is still National so there are a limited number of (good) players that will sign for me, over the last few seasons I have (through a **** load of hard work, manually scouting and trawling through lists of ***** players) found a few amazing players.

The problem is every contract negotiation with them they INSIST on a minimum fee release clause.

Over the last few seasons I've had a great trequarista who I lost before the year was out to Barcelona, I then found a great CM and an unbelievable CB (current league rating of 8.00) this season. When picking a team recently I noticed the CM had "TRN" next to his name, turns out Olympic Lyon activated his £13m release clause and are signing him in Jan :'(. To make matters worse my CB now has the mark of death next his name "WNT" major interest from "oil rich" Man City. His £11m release clause is pocket change to a club that seem to have an average net transfer spend of £130m.

I've been trying to renegotiate his contract so that it doesn't have a release clause in it, ive offered as much as I can in wages, maxed the agent fee but he always has to have the release clause in, and he wont even accept anything over £11m.

Has anyone ever worked out a way of convincing players to drop these clauses? This is killing me, its incredibly hard to build a team when your new star players only last half a season!
 
Only way out of it I've managed to find is kill off the general Release clauses and negotiate seperate Domestic and Foreign Clauses. You can get away with driving up the Foreign price (least I did with a FC United) and keep the Domestic price at around the 11m he wants. That's the only way around it I've found. Try to toss some extra bonuses in there that will likely pay out, but not bankrupt you.
 
You could try offering them out for less than the release clause, that way when teams make offers for them you can still reject it. I don't know if that'll work though, they might just make another offer activating the clause anyway.
 
Try offering him a new contract and taking away the clause, if he still wants that clause, offer him more wages and then he should be happy.
 
^ He's tried that.

I don't think there's anything you can do about it until you start improving your reputation.
 
Its getting closer to January and there's Sky Blue vultures beginning to circle me.

News reports about them activating his release clause keep floating about. I've ended up offering him a new contract (second one in 6 months :S) offering a much better pay deal and a slightly larger release clause, the fact that he has just signed seems to be keeping them at bay for now.

Problem is they have turned their attention to my second CB now, who also insisted on a release clause time to offer him a contract i guess - they wont stop until i'm financially crippled! :mad:
 
On the transfer status page, you can choose how much you want for him... The max is £100m, set it to that for the player and clubs won't bother bidding for him as they believe he is over-valued.

EDIT: I understand he has an £11m release clause, but by setting his value to £100m in the transfer status section, clubs seem to view this over his release clause and you won't get any bids.
 
As mentioned above, I initially try to boost there signing fee and then offer bonuses quite high for the "team of the year" thingy and then if that fails I neg. both a domestic and foriegn release clause to guarentee a decent price...
 
You are facing the problem of modern football, where small in rep but good teams have to sell the players for peanuts because bigger teams just have money... Thats why we see the same clubs year after year in ECL.

Putting the asking price at 100M its of best chance and choice, but keep getting more rep to your club so that cant happen no more. I believe that ECL its your way m8. If you dont go there you will never get rep, even if you play for more 30 years
 
cheers for the suggestions, Ill try putting up the asking prices as you suggested and let you know if the interest goes away. My club is basically being treated as a "stepping stone" by great players at the moment which I guess is why they all want minimum fee release clauses.

*It wont let me put an asking price any higher than the release clause unfortunately :(
 
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try to offer a new contract and lock the release clause at 50m or something
 
You can't put the asking price any higher than the release clause because why would anyone pay that?
This happened with a youngster I signed for Villarreal. His agent sneaked in a £2.5m release clause and I didnt notice so I have Liverpool and Juve sniffing around. I went to negotiate his contract and upped his agent fee from 10k to 100k and he let me put the release clause up to £30m.
Thats the only way I've been able to do it is by letting the agents be greedy then they dont really care about the rest of the contract.
 
I once lost half my Celtic team to release clauses, there is very little you can do once they signed one contract with one in it, especially if you are on a tight budget. What I do now is put players with lots of potential on 5 year contracts and refuse to negotiate a new one. Once you win a cup or do well in Europe you can try to negotiate a new one, but the chances are you will get a minimal release clause and then all you can do is try to up the price to around 20 - 30 million.
 
If anyone finds themselves in this position, the best solution (other than qualify for ECL which is the best solution if you can do it) is to up your asking price for the player, however as I said above you cannot simply up the price on the players transfer status window. You have to wait, and hope that the first offer that comes in for the player is below the release clause, do not reject it, instead reply with asking price £200m future fee: £200m over 12 months. This automatically overrides the transfer status page and sets the players asking price to £400m, and that has deterred everyone.

There was an interesting media story about West Ham "reportedly preparing a £205m swoop for Hyde Center back" but funnily enough no such offer was made! XD
 
Iv'e had this problem before when I got my Wrexham save competing for champs league season in season out. All I can suggest is value the player at 200m so hopefully that puts clubs off and if they do make an offer that matches the release clause offer the player to all club for FREE....someone bigger than the club who's matched the release clause will be the club chosen to sign for by the player and then you can cancel the transfer when it comes to agreeing it at the end. Some times works, some times not.
 
yeah agree with chris, put the transfer to 100m, that will make ai thing they need to search another target and ignoring your players lol
 
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