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Mario Götze is a man getting paid. After his €37M buy out clause was activated last April by Bayern Munich, it turns out that Borussia Dortmund had to deliver some of that money back to the player, for a financial windfall of €3.7M for the 20-year-old German international. According to Spiegel the young attacking midfielder's contract contained a 10% payout clause in the event that his buy-out clause was met. It was one of just a handle of interesting tidbits in his 13-page contract with die Schwarzgelben.
In addition, the contract also reveals that each year had a progressively decreasing buy-out clause with the clause dropping to €30M staring in July 2014, and all the way down to €22M in July of 2015. In many ways, Bayern Munich got in ahead of the storm. It is also a great piece of business, not only from Mario Götze and his agents point of view, but also from Dortmund's. It shows that Dortmund knew the sharks were circling and wanted to drive the price as high as possible. Offering a 10% buy-out gave Götze the incentive to agree to the much higher price on the buy-out and the gradual reductions show that Dortmund expected to lose him in a couple years time. €22M is within the range of most of the bigger European clubs including Dortmund so the first two years are the critical ones and it's clear Dortmund set the bar as high as possible for Bayern Munich and the other extremely wealthy clubs. Feigning shock and outrage when Bayern Munich met that clause just one year after they also activated Javi Martinez's €40M buy-out clause was a calculated PR reaction and nothing more. They knew it was coming. They just hoped it wouldn't be so soon.
So that's right. Mario Gòtze essentially got a nearly €4M incentive to sign a contract with Bayern Munich, in addition to whatever signing bonus Bayern Munich offered him - AND - his highly lucrative wages that are estimated in the range of €10M a season. No wonder he could buy everyone on the team a new set of flourescent red Beats by Dre headphones.
