SC Bastia announced this evening that they would not be signing St Étienne striker Brandao after the deal fell through.
In an initial statement, the Corsican club claimed that while they had completed a deal to sign Brandao on a one plus one year contract, that St Étienne asked for a transfer fee at the last minute in bad faith.
St Étienne then responded with a statement of their own which said that the reason the Brandao deal had fallen through was that Les Verts demanded as a condition of the deal that SC Bastia pay in full the remainder of the transfer fee for central defender Sylvain Martial, who signed in 2012 and is currently playing for Metz.
SC Bastia then made a second and final statement disputing this part of the contract. There was a clause in the deal for Sylvain Martial which saw SC Bastia pay St Étienne €50,000 should they stay in Ligue 1 after the 2013/14 campaign. While this was of course the case, the Corsican side are refusing to pay the fee because the player is now no longer part of SC Bastia setup, a condition which, they claim, nullifies that clause in the contract.
As it stands, Bastia have made it clear that they are going to move on from Brandao and have begun negotiations over other possible targets instead.
