Sofapaka president Elly Kalekwa has maintained they will not accept any transfer money below Sh5 million from Tanta SC for the services of their striker John Avire.
The Harambee Stars striker has been embroiled in a transfer war between the two clubs since last year and he is yet to get clearance to feature for the Egyptian club.
However, Goal understands, a day ago, Tanta tabled a Sh1million offer for the services of the player, which the parent club Sofapaka turned down.
Batoto ba Mungu boss Kalekwa has exclusively told Goal Tanta, through an agent, requested to pay Sh1million to sign the player which they "simply turned down without a second thought.”
“[Avire] is a star player and is not worth Sh1m, that is an insult from Tanta and we will not accept the offer,” Kalekwa told Goal on Friday.
“We are not struggling financially nor poor because giving us Sh1m for a player of Avire’s calibre is just but an insult.
"We used the same money to pay our new players from Uganda, even from Nigeria and its nothing big, we even paid the new players more than that one million.
“We have told them [Tanta] severally we will not accept anything below Sh5million because that is what Avire is worth.
"They have come to us using a broker, who told us they are willing to Sh1million, but we don’t want to bend too low, we can only negotiate when they reach Sh5m and above.
“What shocks me in this whole transfer saga is that Tanta are not willing to talk to us directly and are using brokers [agents we don’t even know] to try and broker the deal, we will not cave in, we know very well [Avire] is our player and he will not play for any club until we give him the clearance.”
On what is next for the player, Kalekwa told Goal: “We have asked them to pay Sh5m then we share the player because we are also looking at the future of the player, we want the player to belong to us and them, so if he makes a move to Europe, we have a share of the player.
“This is all because they don’t have money to pay for the player, we have also asked them to pay and we share the player. The sign on fee for most of our foreign players is more than Sh1million, so why should they give us the same amount?
“We don’t want Avire to suffer, our problem is Tanta because they want to steal the player from us without paying for his services which is very unfair, they will go nowhere, I have a plan B which will finish them, he is my player and I don’t fear anyone, that is my property and I will fight to the end.”
Avire was in the Harambee Stars squad which took part in the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations finals in Egypt and moved immediately at the end of the competition.
