Of the Juve deals, the Danilo-Joao Cancelo swap with Manchester City and the Arthur-Miralem Pjanic exchange with Barcelona. The latter of those saw Barca sign Pjanic for €60 million ($67.84m) and Juve get Arthur for €72m ($81.4m), which effectively means the only money that changed hands was the €12m difference.
Except it wasn’t. That’s because, for accounting purposes, an incoming player has their transfer fee spread out over the length of their new contract (known as amortisation), while the fee for a player being sold is immediate income.
So if a club buys a player for $80 million and signs him to a four-year contract, the outgoing fee becomes an $80 million asset on the books. That value then decreases by $20 million per season, so if they then sell that player for $50 million after three years, they generate a $30 million profit.
That means that despite just a €12 million ($13.54m) difference in the values of Pjanic and Arthur, the deal with Barca generated a
plusvalenza of €41.8 million ($47.26m). With Pjanic failing to register a single goal or assist before being loaned to Turkish side Besiktas and Arthur notching one goal and no assists,
ESPN’s Sid Lowe assessed the deal absolutely perfectly when he wrote that “the accountancy is more creative than the midfielders are.”