A transfer deadline day headline in MLS involves Santiago Rodríguez, famous New York City FC alumnus sold to Botafogo in February 2025, returning to the league to join Columbus Crew as its latest Designated Player signing.
New York City won't see Rodríguez on the field until 2027 at the earliest, with the club already completing its home-and-away series with Columbus, but New York City might finally be seeing some of the money its owed for selling Rodríguez before the 2025 season.
That's because Botafogo apparently isn't up to date with its owed payments to NYCFC for Santi, reportedly not following through in full on the transfer fee said to be worth $15 million.
Since Rodríguez began to be linked with a return to MLS earlier this summer, reports indicated that any deal to bring Santi back stateside would be complicated by debts Botafogo owed, to NYCFC for Rodríguez, but also still to Atlanta United FC for the sale of Thiago Almada, who moved from MLS to Botafogo in 2024 for a $21 million fee.
Botafogo and Atlanta reached a settlement in February over the ongoing dispute over Thiago Almada's transfer, but Botafogo and MLS are still not on good terms, with debts still left to pay.
Relations were so complicated between MLS and Botafogo that, reportedly and allegedly, billionaire Marcelo Claure, a part-owner of NYCFC who has also been rumored to have interest in Botafogo's ownership in the wake of American businessman John Textor's running of the club going disastrously wrong, helped negotiate a settlement between the sides to get Santi Rodríguez back to the American league.
Debts were owed, and now as the dust settles on Santi's return to MLS, Tom Bogert of The Athletic reports that Botafogo received none of the $6 million transfer fee paid by Columbus to acquire Rodríguez — that amount was instead disbursed inside MLS because Botafogo "has outstanding debts to MLS clubs."
To be clear, Columbus did not sign Santi Rodriguez for free. Fee in region of $6 million, per sources. But the fee was not sent to Botafogo because of outstanding debts.
— Tom Bogert (@tombogert.bsky.social) September 2, 2026 at 4:10 PM
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While Columbus technically signed Santi from Botafogo, the Crew ultimately just paid off some of Botafogo's debt inside MLS by dropping a transfer fee on the Uruguayan.
This sequence of events might not make NYCFC whole, but the clubs stand to gain some significant amount of money that addresses the Botafogo transfer fee delinquency. It seems fruitless to point out that when NYCFC initially sold Rodríguez to Botafogo, the club announced that it retained a sell-on clause in the agreement that would entitle NYCFC to some cut of a future Santi transfer fee.
Rather than cashing in on that clause, it seems like NYCFC is instead just clawing back some of what was owed, and this isn't the first time this summer that this kind of situation developed related to a player transfer to a club in Brazil.
Earlier this summer, Corinthians got hit with a transfer ban after NYCFC escalated a case of unpaid loan fees to FIFA, specifically $850,000, the amount Corinthians owed NYCFC for extending Talles Magno's loan through the end of 2025.
Andrew Leigh
The Santi and Talles debt situations make it a double-dose of bizarre summer transfer twists related to NYCFC deals done well over one year ago. Two different Brazilian clubs left New York City FC hanging after the club sent players to Série A, with Corinthians and Botafogo sending over a proverbial I.O.U. rather than pay the fees owed for each of Talles Magno and Santi Rodríguez.
Debts owed by clubs from Brazil over player sales is not a problem exclusive to New York City FC. As mentioned earlier, the same plight befell Atlanta United when dealing with Botafogo over Thiago Almada. Elsewhere in the MLS Eastern Conference, Philadelphia Union recently got burned by Corinthians when selling defensive midfielder José Martínez, with Corinthians punished by FIFA over a reported $1.5 million amount still owed to the Union.
It's a cutthroat business, the soccer transfer business, and New York City FC has now been twice burned while doing deals in Brazil. The club is not alone, and it's also not exactly hard up for cash, given the endlessly deep UAE pockets that fund the City Football Group operation that controls NYCFC.
Yet as the summer window closes in MLS, it's notable that twice this summer, NYCFC was in the news for being owed significant sums of money from Brazil, and in the case of Santi, it required rerouting the transfer fee that got him back to MLS away from Botafogo and towards the sums owed to NYCFC and Atlanta.
