Born on this day in 1988 is Ricky Alvarez. A player who would've gone down alongside the likes of Kader Mangane as one of the many forgotten faces of Sunderland AFC if it wasn’t for him spending more time in court against the club, than actually playing for it. One of our most expensive signings ever, and we never used him. By the time everything was settled he was already a free agent.
Ricky Alvarez came to Wearside on a loan from Italian giants Inter Milan on deadline day in September 2014. The contract had an obligation to buy clause of about £10.5 million should we have avoid relegation that season.
The club knew of a recurring injury to his left knee and added a clause that meant if he suffered the same recurring injury whilst at us and we stayed up, our obligation to buy would be void. Ricky only played 13 games for us (12 of them forgettable, but there was a rocket against Fulham too) before suffering a season ending injury to his knee, the right one this time, not the left. The clauses in the contract didn’t cover both knees, so if we stayed up we would still have to splash the cash.
We wanted to get him surgery but his parent club, Inter, did not give us permission for it. Part way through the season we informed the Italian club that we would not be willing to pay for the player regardless of our situation, relegation or not. We tried everything we could to not have to fork out any money, insisting that the knee injury was part of the deal not to buy and their unwillingness to go ahead with the surgery tarnished the agreement. Thus beginning the never ending court case saga.
Of course, we stayed up which meant contractually we would have to buy him, but due to the previous issues we tried not to. After gaining safety from relegation, Inter sent us a backhanded congratulatory email on staying up, with a side note reminding us of our obligation, cheeky bastards.
The court case that followed would go on to be one of the longest ordeals in the club's history. The original loan deal included a payment plan that would allow us to pay Inter in instalments, and the court ruled that we had to pay them the first instalment of 2.5 million euros whilst the case was still ongoing.
We claimed that we were not aware that Alvarez had surgery to his right knee back in 2012, extending the clause to cover any injuries to both knees. The court did not see it that way and they believed that we knew about it when he did his medical when joining the club, but because we didn't act on any findings they felt that we were happy with Alvarez’s health and had no concerns.
Oh but it doesn’t stop there! Following the events of the medical dispute, we decided to sue the former club doctor who carried out the medical examination. We tried getting a tidy sum of £13 million for him downplaying the severity of his findings.
Ultimately we were forced to pay the full transfer fee for Alvarez and to make matters worse, as if we weren’t bored enough of legal fees and contract disputes the Argentinian wanted a return to the courtroom, claiming a loss of earnings as an outcome of wrongful termination after we terminated his contract.In the end we spent another £4.7 million plus £1.1 in interest. Laughable.
Once again we were paying more settlements that just seemed to keep piling on each other. We even had to pay just short of £400k his first club, Argentinian side Velez, as part of the FIFA act that compensates clubs for their development of young players.
Getting sued by a team is fair enough and happens from time to time. Even a player suing their club happens, but suing a doctor after being sued by your own player and their former team is just hilarious. Something has become a trademark of our past chairmen, passing the blame onto someone else for their shortcomings. The claim was thrown out by KLD when he became chairman of the club.
Most recently, the club has launched a £20 million lawsuit against the lawyers who took charge of the previous disputes, citing that the law firm failed to meet a deadline to submit documents that they believe cost them their chances of winning their appeal. Maybe next year they’ll sue their current lawyers and we’ll be stuck in this infinite loop.
So let's tally it all up, we’ve paid out roughly £15 million at least for a player who played 17 times for us… Hold on. That works out at just under a million pounds for every appearance. £882,359.41 to be precise, and that's a minimum!
It is fitting that it happened to us though, I feel we're the only team in the country that would succumb to a saga like this. I would’ve mentioned other monumental things that happened in his career but this is where the most intrigue lies. He was once touted as a player with high potential when he went to Inter, but then came the injuries and the court cases. He went back to Italy on a free to Sampdoria after us, then Atlas in Mexico and he now spends his time back at the club he started his career at, Velez.
Quite possibly the worst signing ever, let alone for our football club.
