Lobotka’s first club entitled to thousands

Not only the professional club AS Trenčín, but also the small amateur team TJ Družstevník Veľká Hradná will benefit from the transfer of the defensive midfielder.

When players transfer from Spain’s La Liga to Italy’s Serie A, millions of euros are often involved. If the departing player is above average or even a key figure, it’s clear the selling club will demand a high price. Stanislav Lobotka undoubtedly ranked among the top names on Celta Vigo’s roster, and the estimated fee of around 20 million euros for his move to SSC Napoli more or less aligns with the going rate for a footballer of Lobotka’s quality, age, and overall career profile.

Compared to the wealthy clubs of elite leagues, Slovak professional teams are practically “poor relatives” and must carefully manage every euro. Selling their best players abroad is a necessity. For less financially stable clubs, transfers to larger clubs make up a significant and essential part of their annual budget.

The good news for Slovak football isn’t just that Lobotka is moving to a more prestigious foreign club. In practice, two Slovak clubs will benefit financially from the lucrative transfer thanks to the so-called solidarity payment. This amount is calculated as a percentage of the total transfer fee and is then distributed among the clubs that contributed to the player’s training and development.

“This is a system that has long been respected and functions well. The principle of the solidarity payment is to account for the hundreds of hours, days, or even years that coaches and club staff dedicated to the future professional. For high-profile and closely watched transfers like this, it usually goes smoothly. Complications are more common with training compensations, which is a separate concept,” said sports analyst and football agent Jozef Tokos, who specializes in sports law, in an interview with the Economic Daily.

In practice, clubs where a player trained between the ages of 12 and 23 are entitled to financial “compensation.” For the youth categories, this comes to five percent of the total fee, which is then divided using a set formula to determine the exact amount each club receives. For players in the U19 or senior category, the base rises to 10 percent of the total amount, from which the exact figure is also calculated.

Lobotka took his first football steps at the small club TJ Družstevník Veľká Hradná before moving to AS Trenčín—first on loan, and then permanently in the summer of 2010. Even so, Veľká Hradná would still be entitled to a very interesting sum through the solidarity payment. For a transfer worth 20 million euros, TJ Družstevník could collect 150,000 euros. For a club from a village with fewer than a thousand residents, this is a major financial windfall.

“That would cover our operations for the next 30 years,” said club president Milan Ježík to the Economic Daily. However, he also added with concern that there is significant administrative disorder at the Trenčín Regional Football Association, and the club must go through a laborious process to prove when and how many matches the then-unknown boy, Stanislav Lobotka, played for Veľká Hradná.

Even more money would go to AS Trenčín’s coffers, the top-division club where the creative midfielder entered the world of professional football. The team from under Trenčín Castle could receive nearly half a million euros—another interesting amount that the club, owned by Dutchman Tscheu La Ling, could use to acquire more young talent. For comparison, the club’s record signing, striker Antonio Mance, cost Trenčín “only” 300,000 euros in February 2017.

AS Trenčín also profits long-term from clauses it includes in player contracts, entitling it to a percentage of future transfer fees. For example, the club benefited from the record transfer of Brazilian forward Wesley Moraes to Aston Villa last summer, as well as from the move of Matúš Bero to Vitesse Arnhem.