This morning Honduran outlet Diario Deportivo Mas reported that Anderlecht had received a transfer offer from English Premier League side Newcastle for Andy Najar. Diario says the proposed fee is £6,000,000, or approximately $9.3 million. If the reports are accurate, Najar would be the third player in this transfer window to move from Anderlecht to Newcastle, joining Chancel Mbemba ($12.4 million transfer fee) and Aleksandar Mitrovic ($20.2 million) in England.
British newspaper The Chronicle is throwing cold water on the rumor at the moment, but now is as good a time as any to discuss what a Najar transfer would mean to D.C. United, who signed him as a homegrown player back in 2010.
Najar was sold to Anderlecht in 2013 for approximately $3 million, with reports that United would receive a percentage from any future fee Anderlecht got for Najar. If a rumored 20% sell-on fee was in fact part of that deal, then this Newcastle move would mean $1.86 million is United's cut. Major League Soccer would get 25% of that - clubs keep 75% of transfer fees received for Homegrown players, while they get two-thirds for everyone else - which would ultimately see United net just under $1.4 million.
However, that's not the end of how the money is spliced up; this is MLS, so it's never straightforward. MLS rules maintain a cap on the amount of money a club can use from a given transfer fee towards their own incoming moves and/or trades. That maximum is $600,000, so in the event of this rumor being 100% accurate United's unknown stash of allocation money - it's probably still a pretty healthy amount from past stockpiling - would grow quite a bit, but would not instantly get $1,395,000 larger.
The remaining $795,000 would still be United's, but it would have be re-invested into the club in ways that don't impact the roster. This could take a variety of shapes: The team has already replaced their training fields, so ideas like investing it in their youth structure (e.g. drastically reducing and/or eliminating any costs prospective players would pay for entry), looking towards building a team headquarters, or hiring additional staffers are just some of the possibilities.
There are still plenty of variables here, of course: How much the fee actually is; if, in fact, MLS applies the same rules to sell-on fees as they do for initial transfer fees; the exact amount being paid by Newcastle (or someone else); or even if the bid is legitimate. Najar is, after all, under contract with Anderlecht until 2018. Naturally we'll be keeping tabs on what could be some big news for United as the situation develops.