Suggestion: sell on clause for loans

[NervO]

For many clubs loaning out younger players who aren't in the first team plans is a significant part of their development strategy. Equally for many teams taking in a loan player it is a great opportunity to have a quality option added to the squad. However, you do sacrifice a spot in your squad that perhaps could have been used to develop your own players. This is why sometimes clubs in real life add a sell on clause to the loan, where the club taking in the loan player and developing them gets a percentage of the fee if that player is eventually sold.  Unless I am mistaken, this has not been a feature in Football Manager.

It seems like something that should be doable to implement, as it already is a feature for regular purchase transfers. A known recent example of this sell on clause combined with a loan in the Netherlands is Sven Botman. He came over from AFC Ajax to SC Heerenveen where he played a year under Heerenveen and saw great improvement in his development. This saw him get transfered from Ajax to Lille for 8.5 million euro after his loan with Heerenveen had ended. Sven Botman never played a single official match with the Ajax first team, it was Heerenveen who put him in the spotlight. Heerenveen then got 850.000 euro due to having a 10% sell on fee attached to the loan, which is a huge profit for a mid-tier Dutch club. 

 

This feature would add great incentive for clubs to loan players, and equally it would give clubs more reason to actively develop loaned players as they will also benefit from it. It would also make it easier for clubs to loan out youth players to more advanced teams. In the Netherlands this has become very popular with clubs, and you are seeing many players from clubs like Ajax out on loan now. With clubs as big as FC Twente eager to take and develop their players. To me this seems like a small thing to implement, that could add a lot of depth to the transfermarket and the development of it, and it is something that would go along well with simulating activities we are seeing in real life, not just in the Dutch competition but also beyond.

[John Wood]

Reviewed and locked