Marcos Rojo’s complicated transfer to Manchester United has taken another twist as a legal argument between Sporting Lisbon and his third-party owners,Doyen Sports has added to the confusion but may force the Portuguese side to sell. 

Third party management company Doyen Sports are demanding that Sporting pay them the amount they are owed after rejecting Manchester United’s bid, said to be in the region of €20 million.

As reported earlier, Doyen own 75% of Rojo’s economic rights and so would be the main beneficiaries of any transfer deal. However, with Doyen and Rojo’s former club, Spartak Moscow also owed money, Lisbon are understandably after a larger amount.

Since United’s apparent bid, Rojo has handed in a transfer request and refused to train, resulting in Sporting taking disciplinary action but Doyen are now going further in an effort to push this deal through.

The cause of Doyen’s frustrations is that they claim that Sporting owe them 75% of the bid that they rejected. In this case, Sporting would need to pay Doyen €15 million to retain Rojo.This is Sporting’s right if they choose to keep Rojo but they must pay this amount to do so.

Doyen’s statement reads: “Sporting is entirely within its rights not to transfer the player Marcos Rojo, knowing that it only has to make up for the fund under the terms and deadlines as contractually established since the beginning. We will not hesitate to use all legal resources at our disposal to defend fully all our interests and rights”.

The statement added: “Without the intervention of Doyen, through financing, Marcos Rojo would not be a Sporting player.” 

However, Sporting have responded to this to explain that they are now cutting ties with Doyen.

“Doyen know nothing, but decided to make a scene – yet more proof of the mismanagement in this case. We can’t hide our concern that a million-Euro fund and its workers cannot count. 25 per cent of €30million will never be the same as 25 per cent of €20million.In the face of the evidence, Sporting would like to communicate that we have today ended our contracts with Doyen.”

Whether it will be this easy for Sporting to cancel their contract with Doyen remains to be seen but this looks set to turn rather ugly. Manchester United will be waiting as interested spectators to see what the outcome of this is.