I think it helps Pepi’s cause that not only is he near double digits for goal scoring, but he’s doing so for a bad team.
I'd love to see it, from a dispassionate observer POV. I'm not 100% convinced it's a great move for him (or that it's actually going to happen), but I'm also fairly sure no one from the Pepi camp is going to PM me for an opinion either. One thing it does say is that he's being noticed (unsurprisingly) and will, Augsburg willing, have good options this summer. But I don't think folks should discount the pressure a PSV striker will have if they end up this season out of the money.
Think that depends on the length of the AFC contract. If it was only 3 or 31/2 another loan means he can walk for free in a year or 18 mths. Right? I doubt Pepi extends for a year to help them out. This may be their best chance. The good news in all of this as freisland pointed out is that he is being noticed and there is interest. Hooray for that.
It would, but he's under contract until June 2026. He's going nowhere unless Augsburg accept he transfer fee, which is one problem. The other is his salary, which has got to be in excess of €3 million a year and could be close to €4 million. Not many teams outside the Big 5 - and even there few clubs not in the Top 1/3rd or the Prem - can afford that, even for an established player.
I think Pepi is young enough that he might be persuaded to take a small pay cut in search of more development/playing time.
There's no fixed rule, but the rule of thumb is that the player's salary is the transfer fee paid, divided by the number of years on the contract. €16.5 million divided by 4.5 years gives you €3.7 million annually. For young players it's generally lower, but not by more than 20%, which is what a salary of less than €3 million would be. As for under $1 million that @butters59 mentioned, forget it: no agent on earth would take phone calls offering that.
Two seasons, actually. He made 17 MLS appearances (with 2 goals) in 2020 and 31 appearances (13 goals and 2 assists) in 2021. That's enough to get serious clubs watching him, especially given that he was doing it for F.C. Dallas whose pedigree is well-known. Add in that he was already a full international, scoring goals in WC qualification, and it's not hard to see him being able to demand a pretty high salary, especially if an undistinguished club wants to persuade someone being courted by better - not to mention better-run - clubs that can offer a better footballing environment but weren't willing to break their wage structure for him.
Pepi is seemingly an exception https://www.capology.com/club/groningen/salaries/ https://www.capology.com/club/augsburg/salaries/2021-2022/ His agent is kind of sketchy.
Don't know anything about capology.com and how reliable they are, but even if their figures for Pepi at Gronningen are accurate they don't mean much. Since he's on loan at Gronningen, they're only paying a portion of his salary.
There's no point in belabouring this one but if that's what he's on, then "sketchy" is an extraordinarily generous term to use in describing his agent. Terms like "on drugs" or "on the take" spring to mind. Since you've got some external backup and I've got "a rule-of-thumb", let's take your number and move on but it's very, very odd.
I don't think you can treat the price Augsburg paid for Pepi as a real number. It was padded by an American investor who really wanted them to make the move. He was about to move to Wolfsburg for $10m, which I think is a more fair approximation of his value back then.
After a beefy slate the last few matches in which Groningen and in turn Pepi were unsurprisingly unproductive, they have a really soft schedule the last 8 matches. Time for them to make a run at staying up, and for Pepi to do his part by seriously bolstering his tally. If they keep blowing leads anyway, nothing he can do. Just has to control what he can. If he starts the rest of the way, I think he could get to around 15 goals on the season. At minimum has to finish w/ 12.
I'm not sure the investor really wanted them to make the move. At least he certainly downplayed that idea... NEW: US investor David Blitzer asked directly by @GrantWahl on his podcast if Blitzer played a role in the transfer of Ricardo Pepi from FC Dallas to FC Augsburg. Blitzer‘s quotes will follow below.— Derek Rae (@RaeComm) January 20, 2022
Interesting rule of thumb. I’ve never heard this before and seems counter to the idea that teams agree in a transfer fee and then separately on personal terms. The math also likely doesn’t work out well at the lower and higher end of the transfer market. Lastly transfer fees can be vastly different for the same player if they have 3 years left or 1 left on their current contract.
It sounds like that article is saying that the Feyenoord option would be another loan (with a purchase option), which makes some sense. I'm still not sure what the PSV deal would look like. According to Transfermarkt, Augsburg paid €16.36m for Pepi. Also according to Transfermarkt, PSV's record transfer fee in the past 20 years is €12.50m, while Feyenoord's record transfer fee is €7.4m. If PSV makes Pepi their most expensive signing ever, Augsburg may be able to break even on this deal, but I'm still skeptical PSV is paying that amount. And I don't see how Feyenoord's paying that amount, if the purchase option ends up at least matching that.
Pepi's agents for the Augsburg transfer might have sucked, but his current press team is doing a decent job - at least in Netherlands.