US club sell player for 'free lodging and transportation'
ByTNT Sports
Updated 09/01/2014 at 12:56 GMT
NASL side San Antonio Scorpions have completed a unique January transfer, snapping up Fort Lauderdale Strikers’ Walter Restrepo in exchange for “free lodging and transportation during the Strikers’ two road trips to Texas in 2014”.
Walter Restrepo (Fort Lauderdale Strikers' Twitter)
Image credit: Eurosport
The United States second tier seldom makes headlines of any type – the return of the famed New York Cosmos brand was the only real big news from the division in 2013 – but the deal for Restrepo has raised a few eyebrows.
Restrepo, a 25-year-old midfielder from San Diego, was named to the league's Best XI in 2012 before tearing his ACL.
After eight months away from the pitch, he returned to have a productive 2013, so he might be a little disappointed to learn that all that hard work was only worth a few hotel rooms in San Antonio.
Grant Wahl of Sports Illustrated explained how the deal came about: “I spoke to two people involved in the deal over the phone on Wednesday,” he said.
“The first was Bill Brendel, the general manager of the Crockett Hotel, a Scorpions sponsor which hosts all the NASL teams visiting San Antonio.”
“The Scorpions reached out to us to see if we could be creative,” said Brendel, whose hotel was thanked by the Scorpions in their official press release (which has since been taken down). “It was kind of a win-win for everyone.”
This is far from the strangest transfer fee world football has seen, though. In 1921, future England international Ernie Blenkinsop was sold for £100 and a barrel of beer for his team-mates. I
n 1985, another future England star, Ian Wright, was sold to Crystal Palace for a set of weights. And in 2002 Kenneth Kristensen was sold for his weight in shrimp in the Norwegian third division.
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