Paul Pogba’s world record transfer to Manchester United is being probed by Fifa amid claims his agent is set to earn a staggering £41 million out of the deal.
The game’s world governing body confirmed it had “requested additional information” about Pogba’s £89m move to Old Trafford last summer following the publication of details from a forthcoming book which investigated the midfielder’s summer re-signing from Juventus.
The book, Football Leaks: The Dirty Business of Football, by Der Spiegel journalists Rafael Buschmann and Michael Wulzinger, claims Pogba’s agent, Mino Raiola, is in line for a £23m slice of the transfer fee and five instalments totalling £16.39m from United over the course of the player’s contract.
And it claims that United paid £2.2m owed by Pogba to Raiola’s Monaco-based agency, UUNIQQ SARL.
A Fifa spokesman told The Daily Telegraph: “We can confirm that Fifa/Transfer Matching System has requested additional information on transfer from what is already available in TMS.”
A United spokesman said: “We don’t comment on contracts.”
The German book, published on Thursday, also declares Zlatan Ibrahimovic, another Raiola client, to be the highest-paid player in the Premier League on £367,640 a week, totalling just over £19m a year, and claims he is due £2.86m in goal bonuses.
The alleged figures prompted a scathing attack on the Premier League by the chairman of League Two Accrington Stanley.
Holt tweeted: “Hang your heads in shame @premierleague you are an absolute disgrace to English football.”
He continued: “… your largesse is ruining the pyramid and @England national team… your largesse should be the focus of fans fury. You’re destroying the game, not ‘rogue’ owners.”
Holt sought to draw a stark comparison between the fee reportedly paid to Raiola and the annual budget at Stanley, which he said was almost 20 times smaller.
A Premier League spokesman said: “The Premier League supports all clubs in the EFL with solidarity payments and provides significant funding for their community projects and youth development schemes – all things that Accrington Stanley benefits from.
“It is only because of the interest in our competition and in Premier League clubs that we can support Accrington, the wider football pyramid, and communities and schools across the country.
It is alleged that would see his basic wage rise by £1.875m a year and his commercial rights increase from £2.87m to £3.125m, another huge outlay on a player they had, as a teenager, lost to Juve for virtually nothing in 2012.
With regards Ibrahimovic, it is claimed he would have triggered a contract extension at United had he made 31 Premier League starts this season and the club finished in the top three.
The Swede, who could be out until next year after undergoing knee surgery last week, made 27 starts before picking up a season-ending injury.
The announcement of Fifa’s Pogba probe co-incided with a row over its ousting of the men who weeded out corrupt executives during its 2015 crisis.
Hans-Joachim Eckert and Cornel Borbély, the chairmen of the two chambers of its ethics committee, hit out at the decision by its council not to re-nominate them amid reports of another probe into its president, Gianni Infantino. Between them, Eckert and Borbély carried out 194 investigations and sentenced more than 70 officials.
A statement issued on their behalf read: “The impending and clearly politically-motivated non-reappointment puts de facto an end to the reform efforts. This will inevitably lead to a renewed loss of trust and further hurt the already tarnished image of Fifa. Consequently, the non-reappointment will have a negative impact on Fifa in the medium and long term.
“It appears that the heads of Fifa have attached greater weight to their own and political interests, than to the long-term interests of Fifa. They have accepted jeopardising Fifa’s integrity, and, hence, the future of the game.”
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
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