Tottenham have been accused of taking advantage of the war in Ukraine to sign winger Manor Solomon on a free last year.
Solomon was contracted to Shakhtar Donetsk until the end of 2023, but FIFA granted permission for non-Ukrainian nationals to suspend their contracts following Russia’s invasion, and Spurs swooped in to snap up the Israeli international last July.
Shakhtar chief executive Serhiy Palkin is furious with how things played out after his club had to pay £5.1m to buy Solomon in 2019 only to get nothing in return four years later, and hit out at Tottenham’s behaviour.
‘I am feeling very bad towards Tottenham,’ Palkin told The Telegraph. ‘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.
‘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 €25m (£21.2m). 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.’
Palkin hinted that Shakhtar could look to take legal action against Tottenham, and suggested the Premier League club had acted immorally.
‘We have two sides, a legal side and a moral side,’ Palin continued. ‘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?’
Solomon featured in five of Tottenham’s first seven league games last season but has not played since September after picking up a serious knee injury.
