Football Leaks show Inter by-passed Financial Fair Play rules by officially signing Xherdan Shaqiri from Bayern Munich on loan in 2015.
The documents appeared on Swiss site Tagesanzeiger.ch and German paper Der Spiegel and are part of the multi-nation investigation into the hacked emails of various clubs.
In January 2015, Inter were being monitored carefully by UEFA for their Financial Fair Play status.
They therefore couldn’t afford to buy a player for €15m mid-season, but managed to get Shaqiri thanks to an administrative trick.
Football Leaks show Inter by-passed Financial Fair Play rules by officially signing Xherdan Shaqiri from Bayern Munich on loan in 2015.
The documents appeared on Swiss site Tagesanzeiger.ch and German paper Der Spiegel and are part of the multi-nation investigation into the hacked emails of various clubs.
In January 2015, Inter were being monitored carefully by UEFA for their Financial Fair Play status.
They therefore couldn’t afford to buy a player for €15m mid-season, but managed to get Shaqiri thanks to an administrative trick.
Officially, Inter signed Shaqiri on a free loan from Inter with option to buy, which would become obligatory if certain conditions were met.
This was already known, but the Football Leaks documents show the ‘conditions’ were in reality inevitable.
The clauses stated that Inter had to pay Bayern Munich €15m whether Shaqiri played from July 1 to December 31 2015 in a friendly or official match.
Another clause ruled Inter would need to pay €15m even if Shaqiri didn’t feature in a single match due to injury or suspension.
Just in case those weren’t enough, a third clause obliged Inter to buy Shaqiri as long as by December 31 the team was in the top 17 of the Serie A table – in other words, outside the relegation zone.
Fast forward to the summer of 2015 and Inter no longer have confidence in Shaqiri, but find themselves on the hook for €15m to Bayern Munich payable by December 31.
In this situation, it’s reported they scrambled around for a quick sale and managed to send him to Stoke City for €14.5m on August 11.