Liverpool have avoided paying towards £13m in bonuses for Luis Diaz’s form this season, according to reports. The Reds will eventually owe it.
This comes from Record. They claim that Luis Diaz’s form this season doesn’t count towards a potential £13m in bonuses that Liverpool must pay.
The Reds struck a deal with FC Porto back in January to sign Diaz. That deal included an upfront fee but also around £13m in bonuses. They revolved around individual and team success.
Liverpool must pay Porto €1m for every year they qualify for the Champions League, for instance, over a maximum of five times. The same goes for every time Luis Diaz plays 45 minutes 25 times in a season – that’s a €1m payment, up to five times.
Other bonuses revolve around Diaz’s individual output, too, and his form this season suggests all of those payments are on their way. It’s difficult to see how Liverpool won’t end up paying the full £13m, in all truth.
But they won’t start paying them yet. Liverpool made sure that said bonuses are only from the 2022/23 campaign onwards – nothing Diaz has done thus far counts. So the Reds qualifying for next season’s Champions League won’t be a €1m payment.
Luis Diaz is flying at Liverpool
It’s clever from Liverpool, who likely weren’t planning on signing Diaz for this season. All suggestions are that they saw him as a summer transfer target – this deal came six months early.
Thus it makes sense to work the payments onto their books from the summer as planned. The outright fee came early – as did Diaz’s wages – but a big chunk of the cost is ‘as planned’.
Though, we can’t imagine Liverpool thought there would be any danger of Diaz seriously contributing towards the bonuses this quickly. He’s been ‘incredible’, in the words of Michael Owen, and it was clear after a few weeks that the Reds had someone special.
Diaz will end up costing every penny of that bonus – but he’ll be well worth it.