Spanish Buy-Out Clauses need rethinking for future Football Manager games

I found a very interesting article about the spanish buy out clauses. It reveals aspects of it that I'm not sure many people knew about.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/sid_lowe/01/29/atletico.buyouts/index.html

Under the terms of that basic agreement, clubs accepted that another club which paid the buyout clause could sign a player without resistance. If it's €45M, you pay €45M and you take your player, no mess and no fuss. It is, essentially, a price set at which you say you will sell.

But you don't necessarily have to sell at that price; that agreement has a legal foundation that is a little different. At an informal level, the modus operandi has been altered since Real Madrid walked off with Luis Figo for the symbolic but just about manageable figure of 1,000M pesetas. The buyout clause remains, but the application of it is different.

Now most clubs are saying: this is the buyout clause, sure, but if you make a hostile bid, a bid that we do not welcome, we will force you to apply the clause legally. And when you apply the law legally, that is a different issue. When you apply the law legally, it is a different price.

That means one of two things, both of which increase the price. Firstly, it can mean adding the VAT at 18 percent. In the past, clubs have agreed to include VAT in the invoice for a player's transfer (which of course can be claimed back from the state). Now, if the bid is hostile, they will not. In other words, the buying club will have to pay the clause plus the 18 percent. So, Aguero's price rises from €45M to €53.1M ($72M).

The other option is for a club to simply refuse to sell -- until, that is, it is forced to. That's where the legal buyout clause kicks in, Decreto Real 1006/1985. But that decree is exactly what it says it is: a buyout clause. A player (not the club) deposits the money, the value of the buyout clause, at the Spanish league and unilaterally breaks his contract. That money, of course, would be given to him by the buying club in order to buy himself out. The problem is that as soon as that money hits his account it counts as income -- even if it is then deposited elsewhere. And so it is liable to taxation at 44 percent. In other words, the €45M is the amount left after taxation. That is to say that Aguero's overall cost is €80.2M ($109M).

This interesting aspect of the buy out clauses in spain changes things quite dramatically. Football Manager needs to now take this into consideration.

I'd want to hear that from a more reputed source than Sid Lowe. I think there is more to it than he seems to say.

To implement something like that the whole financial side of the game would need to have a massive overhaul. Its not just transfers and fee's where it fall short. Also things like club debt. In Man Utd's case the debt fluctuates depending on the state of the currency exchange rates amongst other things. FM is very black and white at the moment with regards to finances.