Shakhtar Donetsk chief executive Sergei Palkin is planning talks with Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy over securing a transfer fee for Manor Solomon.
Solomon, who spent last season at Fulham, joined Tottenham on a free transfer earlier this summer by using FIFA’s Annex 7 amendment.
Due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, foreign players or coaches at Russian and Ukrainian clubs are allowed to unilaterally suspend their contracts until June 2024.
Solomon’s deal at Shakhtar was due to expire on December 31, 2023, meaning he was able to suspend his contract at Shakhtar beyond its expiry, allowing him to join Spurs as a free agent.
Shakhtar head to London next week for a pre-season friendly with Tottenham and will use the opportunity to discuss a fee for the highly rated midfielder as they look to recoup the €6.5million (£5.6m) fee they paid to sign him from Maccabi Petah Tikva in 2019.
“We are sure Tottenham executives understand that Shakhtar invested significant money in the Solomon transfer, investment that Ukrainian clubs in our difficult position, simply cannot afford to lose,” Palkin told Standard Sport.
“We hope we will have a meeting with Tottenham representatives on the eve of our friendly match and in good faith we will find a solution to the Manor Solomon issue. The solution should satisfy both sides.
“We are not trying to receive some kind of profit. We need just to cover everything that we lost, and that’s it. I believe that we will find a solution, an amicable solution, to have all parties happy.”
The amendment to Annex 7, the ‘Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players’, took place in March 2022 when war broke out in Ukraine.
Originally the amendment was due to run until June 2022, but it was then extended by a year and now until June 2024. Shakhtar challenged the amendment in the Court of Arbitration for Sport, but CAS ruled in FIFA’s favour.
Shakhtar are now mounting a fresh legal challenge through the European Commission, with the club believing Annex 7 has already cost them £68m in lost transfer fees.
As well as Solomon, Shakhtar have had issues with winger Tete and Annex 7. Tete is contracted to Shakhtar but he used Annex 7 to sign for Lyon for free, so Shakhtar Donetsk received no fee for him.
But just after a few months, Lyon moved Tete on to Leicester and receieved a €1m fee. Again, Shakhtar didn’t receive anything from this. Tete still is contracted to Shakhtar so the club is confident that Lyon abused Annex 7 to make a profit from him, whilst the Ukranian club received nothing through the whole process. Therefore they have filed a claim against Lyon at the FIFA Football Tribunal.
“First of all, at this moment, we want to set up some kind of solidarity fund for Ukrainian clubs, because not just our club suffers from this Annex 7,” said Palkin.
“We want to set up the fund to support Ukrainian football, otherwise we will have big difficulties.
“The situation is quite catastrophic. All sources of income that we have before, and now we just have two sources - to sell players and to receive some kind of bonuses from UEFA.
“When FIFA issued this Annex 7, they just cancelled one of the [financial] sources that we have. They always say that we are one football family, but as I understand, Ukraine is out of this football family.”
Shakhtar are now based in Kiev as they try to continue playing football while war grips the country.
“Life is very hard,” says Palkin. “The worst time is in the night, because the Russians are launching drones and rockets. It can continue for five or six hours in the night. Therefore, can you imagine, when almost every night you are not sleeping.
“You are staying in the basement, you are staying in shelters. From a mental point of view, it’s very difficult to live through all this.”
To raise money for the war effort, Shakhtar are facing Tottenham at Spurs’ stadium on August 6 and Palkin has thanked clubs in England and their fans for supporting the cause.
“We feel it,” he said. “The most important thing is they pay attention, big attention to what is going on in Ukraine.
“All the money [from the friendly] we will send for charitable things in Ukraine. We have a lot of projects - supporting children, supporting severe injured soldiers, supporting families that suffer from this war. All this money will go this way.”
