There are some stories about the Ibrox club in our sports media that have no bearing on my life at all, yet I still feel compelled to cover them.
This is because I work in a media environment and read everything written about our club and the one across town. And although we have no skin in the game with some of these articles, their sheer nature infuriates me and compels me to comment.
Let me put it another way: some of these stories are an insult to the intelligence of every reader. They are designed to appeal to a specific audience—one to which I do not belong—but I still find them offensive. Their very existence assumes most readers are idiots.
The Malik Tillman story is one of the most atrocious and gross insults to readers’ intelligence that I have ever encountered. Last week, it morphed into something even more absurd: the idea that the Ibrox club might profit further from a player they never owned, through sell-on clauses they were never entitled to in a hundred years.
There was nothing about this story—or the story it was built upon—that wasn’t obvious rubbish. In fact, it might be the most suspect tale the Scottish mainstream sports media has ever concocted. It has more holes in it than a Tetley teabag and apparently more believers than a Donald Trump promise.
And yet it’s garbage—transparently fictitious. Not a single element of it stands up to scrutiny. It makes no sense whatsoever. It’s unsupported by a single fact in the public domain and so blatantly untrue that it’s almost unbelievable anyone with more than two brain cells could accept it.
Here’s how the story goes, just in case you need reminding:
From 2022 to 2023, Malik Tillman was on loan to Ibrox from Bayern Munich. The loan included a £5 million option to buy him—a clause that everyone of a Celtic persuasion knew would never be exercised.
There were two simple reasons for this.
The Money: Ibrox didn’t have £5 million to spend, and they certainly couldn’t meet Tillman’s salary demands.
The Player: Tillman and his agents were always looking for suitors. They were aware of interest from Holland and elsewhere and were determined to get him to a better league than Scotland.
This wasn’t a secret. Tillman himself said in interviews that he didn’t expect to stay at Ibrox beyond the loan. He made it clear that he had preferred destinations, and if a club from one of those came calling, he would go. There was never any prospect of him agreeing to stay at Ibrox.
Lo and behold, the time to exercise the option came and went. This happened after the manager admitted the player didn’t want to stay and after Tillman himself stated he wasn’t interested in remaining. Sure enough, he signed for PSV Eindhoven.
Not long after, the story emerged that Bayern Munich had somehow paid Ibrox £1 million as part of Tillman’s transfer to PSV.
The narrative they spun was that Bayern had “backed out” of Ibrox’s right-to-buy option. But that option was never going to be exercised. The player wanted to go to Holland. A first option only grants a club the right to have its offer accepted—it does not bind the player. Even if Ibrox had found £5 million and exercised the clause, Tillman had already made it clear he would have turned it down.
Let me repeat the fundamentals here; they didn’t have the money. The player didn’t want the move. There was no reason whatsoever for Bayern to break the terms of the deal. The deal was dead. It was a non-starter.
Yet we’re told that the Ibrox club was entitled to £1,000,000 because they didn’t get their man—the man they couldn’t afford, who didn’t want to sign for them, and who wasn’t their player in the first place.
We were told that Ross Wilson took all the credit for this, claiming it was his masterful scheme. But come on—if a club managed to get £1,000,000 for a player who wasn’t theirs, that’s more than masterful.
This guy should be working for NASA or another government department, Microsoft, Apple, or some tech giant, because he’s clearly some kind of genius. I’ve never heard of anything like that happening in football. It’s a complete one-off.
This story is obviously rubbish.
It has no merit whatsoever, except that it provided the Ibrox club and its board with a convenient deflector shield at the time. They failed to close the deal, and the player went to PSV, which only underlined that he was indeed a talented footballer—one they should have worked harder to sign on a permanent deal.
The story sounded so absurd that I assumed it would collapse immediately. Yet it gained widespread circulation and even wider acceptance, despite being rotten to its core.
How, then, has this story not only survived but actually expanded in the past few weeks? Now we’re hearing claims that if PSV sells Tillman, the Ibrox club is entitled to a cut of the transfer fee. I mean, what???
Is this not a gross insult to the intelligence of everyone who reads it? It’s like selling a car you never legally owned, watching the new owner register it, and then showing up at their door asking for a share of the insurance payout after they crash it.
Let’s ask the question no-one has bothered to ask; Tillman was on loan. He went back to Bayern Munich, the club he was loaned from. Bayern sold him to PSV, and if PSV sells him to someone else, how on earth is Ibrox entitled to anything?
Who in their right mind would read that and think it made sense? This story originated on an Ibrox fan blog—not one of the smarter ones, mind you. But they were apparently smart enough to know the mainstream media would pick up this garbage and run with it as fact. All it does is heap scorn on everyone involved.
I don’t believe a word of it.
I don’t believe they ever got £1,000,000 from Bayern Munich—they were never entitled to it. I certainly don’t believe they’re in line for another £3,000,000. And I absolutely don’t believe the latest ridiculous claim which says they could end up banking a total of £5.7 million for a player they never owned or had under contract. This figure, by the way, exceeds the original buy-out clause.
Clubs that get players on loan don’t get sell-on clause rights!
That’s not how it works!
I feel like someone should scream this stuff in the face of every journalist who has regurgitated this garbage or who believes a word of it.
No club in the world would agree to such a ludicrous deal. Are we really supposed to believe that PSV signed a contract where both Bayern Munich and Ibrox are entitled to sell-on fees? Absolute nonsense.
Yet, for some reason, it’s not too ridiculous for our hapless hacks to swallow. You’d think a story like this couldn’t be made up—except, clearly, someone did.
Photo by Photo Prestige/Soccrates/Getty Images
It would only make sense if the DebtDome Board were trying to Money Launder an off the books donation.
The £1million would be classed as revenue from their Player Trading Model and therefore could be used to cover up a potential or actual breach, if they were sailing close to the edge, of the FSR protocol. If the £1million was ever there it has to appear somewhere in the books.
Ross Wilson sounds like someone every sales company would be chasing. If he can make £1m off of something they’ve never owned he could sell combs to bald men or mirrors to the blind…
Best salesman since Del Boy Trotter.
Thanks James for adding your sense of astonishment to this story. I read the article and I have to admit my brain was in a tangled mess trying to understand how they could be entitled to that level of benefits from a player they had on loan! You’ve made me realise it’s not just me and the story may indeed be a complete fabrication, though for what reason I’m still scratching my head!
Thanks for picking this up and doing it justice James. My recollection of the first part the £1m compo really frustrated me cos it came up time and again for months and as you said was Soooooo absurd they get compo for someone else’s player.
Then when I read about it from the SUN link yesterday I just thought this is just madness, can people actually be sold this nonsense. A player after 6 months being sold for £10m is going back to the selling club for £30m, REALLY and rangers could get a sell on….. Oh man what an insult to anyone/Everyone.
I nearly spat out my Kombucha reading that yesterday 🙂 HH
Surely the reporter must be able to verify his source or is it ok to just make up the story?
Rangers supporters cannot be so gullible to believe this rubbish.
Sevco !
Whilst it would be highly unusual I can see a way whereby the original £1m from Bayern was due to Sevco. So Sevco took the player with an option to buy for £5m. They may also have negotiated a clause that said if they couldn’t take up the option (say player didn’t want to join) and Bayern then sold Tillman for more than £5m then Sevco would be due a 20% share of the fee in excess of £5m on basis that they “developed” the player from a £5m to (in this case) a £10m player. And 20% of that uplift would in this case equal £1m. If they pulled that deal off then fair play to them.
I cannot for the life of me however see how they could retain any sort of interest once sold to PSV.
One of the reasons I gave up buying any Scottish newspaper a few years ago is articles like this. The proprietors of all Scottish newspapers have damaged journalism beyond repair, by insisting that sports journalists in Scotland print what amounts to lies about the original Rangers FC and its barsteward offspring The Rangers FC. It’s ironic that in doing so, they have done the supporters of both clubs no favours.
All the Meedja has done is shackle themselves in a lockstep, slow dance leading to oblivion for them and their dwindling demographic.
The only remaining question is who will succumb first?
We know they didn’t receive £1m from the original Tillman deal because there was no record of it in any of their financial reports. So why isn’t anyone asking why it’s not recorded in there??
Dixie – that’s the one piece that doesn’t allow my “theory” to stand as it would be a big enough number for the auditors to want to show as income.
Because this is Scotland – And they are Sevco DixieD67 !
When the original £1m story was going round I thought it’s such a wild lie that maybe it’s true and now this? Utter bullshit. He probably won’t even go to Bayern but if he does, having to give Sevco 10% for a player who was never theres would be enough to cancel the deal.