Eredivisie runners up Ajax has paid 3 million Euros to Catalan side Barcelona for the services of defender Oleguer Presas (so that’s his last name).  If Ajax make it to the Champions League just once over the next three seasons, they are required to pay Barcelona another 2.5 Million Euro.

Oleguer is reportedly set to earn 750,000 Euros a year for three season and is the 4th addition (Ismael Aissati, Miralem Sulejmani and Dario Cvitanich) this summer.

Oleguer, known to be one of the deeper thinkers in the game, published his first book, Cami d’Itaca (Road to Ithaca) which told the story of his struggle with anorexia as a youth and publicly questioned the Spanish governments involvement in both of the Gulf Wars.

Via Wikipedia

On the 7 February 2007, in an article written for Basque language newspaper Berria, he questioned the validity and independence of legal and judicial processes in the Spanish state, using the example of ETA member Jose Ignacio de Juana Chaos,guilty of 25 assesinates, and his hunger strike to question those processes. His decision to write the article brought veiled criticism from his coach, Frank Rijkaard, and Barça President Joan Laporta. As a direct result of the article, Oleguer lost his boot sponsorship with sports firm Kelme.

Oleguer has been the subject of a strong public backlash in Spain and is regularly heckled and booed in some of the country’s football stadiums due to his anti-government, anti-system and pro-radical Catalan stance. When asked about whether he felt that he should not have written the piece, Oleguer replied, “The consequences I suffer are nothing compared to what many people go through. What did sadden me, though, was that most people didn’t actually read the piece. If people engaged in dialogue with intelligence and disagreed, then fine, but they didn’t.”

image via Cache