Real Madrid's deal to sign Eden Hazard from Chelsea last summer was actually worth a whopping £143m - far higher than originally believed.
Hazard entered the final year of his contract in 2019 and made it clear that he did not plan to sign an extension, as he sought to fulfil his dream of joining Real Madrid.
The true cost of last summer's deal had never been officially disclosed. Some reports had Chelsea receiving a fee as low as £88m, while BBC Sport first reported that the agreement could reach closer to the £150m mark.
The fee has now been confirmed after details of the payment were brought to court by Hazard's former side Tubize.
As noted by Het Laatste Nieuws, Tubize believe they are owed over £700,000 as part of the deal which took Hazard to the Santiago Bernabéu, producing all the details of the transfer to back up their argument and consequently revealing that Real agreed to pay a whopping £143m to sign Hazard in 2019.
It is believed that Real paid an initial £89m to land Hazard last summer, with bonuses and instalments likely to see the deal rise by close to £50m, and those add-ons undoubtedly contributed to Madrid's reluctance to spend big this summer.
For Chelsea, this is only another feather in the cap of director Marina Granovskaia.
The news came on the same day as it was revealed that Granovskaia had managed to negotiate a sizeable discount in Chelsea's pursuit of Bayer Leverkusen's Kai Havertz.
The 21-year-old, who has left international duty to undergo a medical with the Blues, was expected to cost close to the £100m mark, but The Telegraph note that Granovskaia managed to strike a deal worth an initial £62m with just £8m in add-ons.
Affording such a deal this summer, when most sides' bank balances have been crippled by the coronavirus outbreak, was almost certainly only made possible because of Granovskaia's ability to squeeze so much money out of Madrid in 2019.
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Source : 90min