IT was no surprise when Jack Currie became the latest graduate of the Wimbledon Academy to leave over the summer for a sizeable fee. Currie was signed by Championship club Oxford United for around £350K-£400K, in a deal likely embedded with add-ons.
It’s below what Bristol City offered of around £700K during the mid-season 2023 transfer window, when rumour has it that negotiations broke down over an insistence to loan Currie back to the club for the remainder of the 2022/23 season.
Currie’s transfer continues a steady stream of income filtering back into the Dons coffers from player sales.
We all know about the recent well-publicised sales of Jack Rudoni, Ayoub Assal and Ali al-Hamadi for hefty sums and sell-ons, but what if I told you about a previous Dons player who is worth 10 — or even more — times than that of Currie’s fee and who didn’t even get anywhere near playing a first team game for Wimbledon!
Jack RudoniAyoub AssalAli al-Hamadi
Another transfer went through this off-season yet it did not get anywhere near as much attention or fanfare from Wimbledon fans at the time, but it should have because of its financial implications.
Michael Golding left for Chelsea when he was playing for the Wimbledon Under-12s in 2018. In what proved astute business, as part of Golding’s Chelsea deal an extra payment was negotiated for a first professional contract and another one for a first team debut (he made his first team debut for Chelsea against Preston North End in the FA Cup last season).
Significantly, for the Dons, a sell-on fee was included and that’s where the big money comes in.
In July (2024), Golding was sold by Chelsea to Leicester City for a fee of around £4 million — some sources suggest it was even more, possibly around £4.5 million.
If the fee was actually £4.5m then Wimbledon will receive around £860k (assuming the sell-on is the oft-quoted 20%) plus the original £200k for the first team debut, contract etc.
Michael Golding
That makes Golding, now 18, a £1million+ transfer for Wimbledon. And the good news doesn’t stop there.
The sell-on fees last indefinitely, depending on whether Golding is sold on by Leicester City in the future.
It’s not out of the realms of possibility that teenage Golding’s transfer value could keep accruing if he continues his upward trajectory in the game although the returns will be less dramatic as we would get 20% of Chelsea’s sell-on fee.
Assuming their sell-on is 20% then we’d get 4% of any profit on a future sale by Leicester.
And as has been mentioned previously, there are other alumni from the Wimbledon Academy now making their way in the game elsewhere and bringing in financial dividends for the Dons. Leo Castledine, Joe Whitworth, Spike Brits and Matthew Cox readily come to mind.
Not bad for an Academy, built up from scratch by Nigel Higgs and Mark Robinson and now under the stewardship of Michael Hamilton.
I’m told the Academy operating costs are now likely to be around £500k, so Michael Golding’s motza transfer deal has effectively bought Wimbledon the equivalent of two years’ worth of academy spending. And for a club, fixated with paying off the Plough Lane Stadium debt, that is very welcome news.– Rob Smith
[‘Million pound transfers: Rudoni, Assal, al-Hamadi …. Golding‘ was first published in the August-September 2024 issue of the Wombles Downunder fanzine. Details on how you can subscribe to Wombles Downunder.]
