Shanghai SIPG GM reveals Oscar’s final price tag and why he chose to leave Chelsea

Shanghai SIPG general manager Sui Guoyang sounds quite pleased with life at the moment, spending big and making waves in the world of international football. He recently landed a big name manager in André Villas-Boas and added a (fringe) Brazilian international in the prime of his career in Oscar. Shanghai may have paid through the nose to get him from Chelsea, but that’s all part of their plan.

Though if the GM’s to be believed, it’s not been all about the money in the case of Oscar. Of course it is largely about the money, but it’s also about other things, like not playing.

Obviously.

“Oscar has fallen out of favour with Conte because he has no place in Chelsea’s 3-4-3 formation. It played a key part in his desire to leave. He felt terrible to sit on the bench and not be involved. He is so young.”

"Oscar wants to come back to the Brazil national team. Some of his compatriots play in the CSL and they still get called up to the national team. So it helped him to make the decision to move to China. And of course, the appointment of [ex-Chelsea boss] Andre Villas Boas is a plus. Oscar knows we are an ambitious club."

Which is all nice and well, but you know ... show me the money.

"If we don’t offer €60 million, do you think he will bother to come? There's such a huge gap between CSL and Europe's top leagues. It’s unrealistic to suggest that we would have done it in a different way.”

"The cost of signing the player was €60m indeed, not £60m. The club's senior management personally flew to Paris to seal the deal."

-Sui Guoyang; source: Goal

So that clears up the final price, which had been initially reported as £60m, but is actually €60m, which translates to around £51-52m (the latter of which we also saw in last week’s stories). Meanwhile, Oscar’s salary might actually be more than initially thought — it was reported at around £400k per week (so roughly £20m per year, post tax), but Sky’s report claims that it’s “over £500k” (or more than £25m per year, presumably still net).

Wow!