Tottenham Hotspur have been slammed by Shakhtar CEO Serhiy Palkin, with the Premier League side accused of “taking advantage of the war” in Ukraine.
Manor Solomon, 24, left Shakhtar Donetsk to join Tottenham on a free transfer during last summer’s transfer window.
“They have taken advantage of the war…”
This transfer came about after he impressed for Fulham during his loan spell at Craven Cottage during the 2022/23 campaign.
Solomon was contracted to Shakhtar until the end of 2023 but Spurs were able to sign him on a free transfer after FIFA gave all non-Ukrainian nationals playing in that country permission to suspend their contracts amid the ongoing war with Russia.
Shakhtar feel Spurs should have at least added a sizable sell-on clause in the deal for Solomon so the Ukrainian side can be compensated for his exit at a later date.
Injuries meant Solomon only made five Premier League appearances for Tottenham during his debut season, but Palkin has hit out at Ange Postecoglou’s side in a fiery interview with The Telegraph.
Palkin “feels very bad towards Tottenham” as he has accused the Premier League outfit of “taking advantage of the war”.
“I am feeling very bad towards Tottenham,” said Palkin.
“I cannot believe this kind of club with a huge history – not just European level, world level – that they can behave like this. From my point of view, it’s not acceptable behaviour. They have taken advantage of the war.
“Maybe if this was a very small club in Europe with not much money or whatever, maybe I could understand it. But Tottenham? Tottenham. How is it possible?”
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“It’s very strange that everybody says we are one football family, when one of the top clubs receives a player free of charge and the market value of this player is up to €25 million (£21.15 million). We invested in this player and developed this player for this kind of value.
“I even said to Tottenham: ‘Guys, I don’t need money for him now. Let’s have some kind of sell-on fee in the future like 30 or 40 per cent. That would be enough for us.’ But they said: ‘No, no, we cannot give you. We’ll give you 10 per cent.’ I said: ‘Guys, that’s not serious.’ Giving us 10 per cent is not respectful. You behave not like the football family. You behave like a robber on the road. It’s not correct. Therefore, at this moment we will see the next steps.
“We have stopped any negotiations with Tottenham. We are concentrating on a court case against Lyon and we will see the result of that and after that, we will make a decision about what kind of steps we will take against Tottenham.”
Palkin has also compared Spurs with Real Madrid as the La Liga champions did not “want to play dirty games”.
“We have two sides, a legal side and a moral side,” said Palkin. “The court will decide the legal side. About the moral side, when I talked with Tottenham, I talked about the moral part of this case.
“We have some players, Vinicius Tobias at Real Madrid and Maycon at Corinthians. Those clubs, they wanted to take our players, but they came to us and said: ‘OK, we can take them for free but we don’t want to play these dirty games.’
“Instead, they offered to pay us for loans. Real Madrid took our player and paid us for two years. Corinthians did the same. You see the difference between Real Madrid and Tottenham? The management of Real Madrid behaved themselves and how did Tottenham behave?”