The growing menace of third party ownership in football has been highlighted in a BBC interview with the Sporting CP president.
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Sporting Club de Lisbon president Bruno de Carvalho has told the BBC that his club were “pressured” into selling defender Marcos Rojo.
In conversation with Alan Green on the BBC’s World Football Show, Carvalho has indicated that the third parties who owned shares of Rojo pressued the Portuguese club into selling on the Argentinian.
“We did not want Rojo to leave. He was an important player for us… the pressure was so big, they started to speak to the clubs and come here to the meetings.
“The directors thought they were people from the clubs because they were speaking in English although they were Portuguese. They believed it was a person from a club but it was a person from the funds.”
One can only sympathise with Sporting so much, as it is always their decision to sign a player who is party third-party owned, however the news will be worrying to Manchester United fans who are already concerned with outside influences, like “super-agent” Jorge Mendes, and their control of transfer at the club.
The Premier League has banned third-party ownership and Manchester United will have bought Rojo in part from his owners, but their growing influence in the game has lead FIFA to introduce a ban on their activities, which will come into effect over the next four years.