Is Vancouver Whitecaps Gershon Koffie moving closer to being sold on to Europe?

It has long been rumoured that Vancouver Whitecaps Midfielder Gershon Koffie was going to be sold on by the Whitecaps early in 2016 (see below).  The destination as noted was originally rumoured to be France.

Earlier today, a website from Koffie’s native Ghana came to light (hat tip to Glass City on Twitter for originally spotting the Football Made in Ghana post) that indicated that Koffie was now being pursued by not one but two Belgian First Division clubs (Lokeren and Westerlo) and that he would be sold for “not less that $2 million”.

Let me say first of all that I am a big fan of Koffie and I really hope that he is not moving on. That said, I think that there have been long lingering questions about Koffie’s consistency.  As such, I really, really have to question the $2 million figure being bandied about.  First of all (and I assume that that is U.S. dollars we are talking about) while Koffie is a great young talent, as a player that hasn’t even been a consistent starter in the MLS, a $2 million dollar fee seems exorbitant to me.  That transfer fee would I believe be much more than the transfer fee for any of other current Whitecap player.  If two clubs are willing to pay that kind of money for Koffie, then I suppose they can go ahead and knock themselves out.  However, I can’t help but wonder that this might be a bit of an exaggeration, potentially an overstatement of the worth of a Ghanaian soccer player on a Ghanian soccer website?  Dunno.

It is my understanding that if any potential deal occurs that any transfer fee received by the Whitecaps would be split with the MLS (damn that single entity thing again) with the league getting a third of transfer fee and Whitecaps receiving up to a maximum of $650,000 of the transfer fee in the form of General Allocation Money (GAM) with the remainder of the money going towards team infrastructure (non-salary items such as training facilities, team equipment, advertising etc.) (Thanks Harry for the comment and pointing me in the right direction on that!).  That split apparently changes to 25% and 75% for homegrown players (see here for a good article that breaks down the fee split structure concerning MLS transfers).  Nothing to sneeze at for sure and a good bit of business for the Whitecaps especially as they now seem to have a wealth of young defensive midfielders (Teibert, Laba, McKendry, etc. and especially now with the recent signing of Flores).  Unfortunately, if this rumour is true, it appears that Koffie appears to have been identified as the odd man out in Robbo plans and has been identified as a sellable asset.  Besides Koffie being potentially sold on (as suggested by the Ghanian website), could there be more even movement of players in the midfield especially if Robbo goes to a single defensive midfielder (Laba) in a 4-1-3-2 or 3-1-4-2 formation as rumoured?  Maybe. We’ll just have to wait and see.