The Sporting Braga President has been talking about the sale of Lukáš Horníček to Newcastle United.
António Salvador speaking at the Portugal Football Summit.
Lukáš Horníček signed for Newcastle United on 3 August 2026, 20 days before United were kicking off the new season against Liverpool in the Premier League.
The Sporting Braga President now revealing that Newcastle United paid more than the release clause for their new goalkeeper.
A host of other clubs were also interested in the Czech Republic international and indeed Lukáš Horníček turned down Hull City when they met the release clause price.
António Salvador now revealing at the Portugal Football Summit in these quotes via A Bola: “We believed Lukáš Horníček could stay this season but he had a release clause and there was a club [Newcastle United] who actually paid more [than the release clause], they paid €30.57m when the clause was €30m…It was a good deal for the club and for the player, who had the ambition of playing in the English league.”
Instead of simply triggering the release clause, Newcastle United negotiated with Sporting Braga to actually pay around £500,000 more than the €30m (approx £26.19m) release clause, in return the Portuguese club agreeing to the payment schedule that United wanted.
When Lukáš Horníček completed his move to Tyneside on 3 August 2026, Sporting Braga on their official social media putting out this classy and amusing farewell message about their departing keeper: “From now on, Newcastle it’s the safest city in England.”
In the official statement released on their club website, Sporting Braga actually did publish the exact transfer fee but at the time it was commonly thought that this had been the exact release clause and that in fact the amount the keeper could be automatically released for, wasn’t €30m on the dot.
The Sporting Braga statement starting with: ‘SC Braga has reached an agreement with Newcastle United (England) for the permanent transfer of goalkeeper Lukáš Horníček for a fee of €30.578 million.’
The official Sporting Braga statement on the sale of Lukáš Horníček going on to say: ‘Signed from FK Pardubice (Czechia) in the 2019/20 season at just 16 years of age, the SC Braga No. 1 quickly established himself as one of the club’s brightest prospects, becoming a standout performer at every level of the academy. From the Under-19s to Braga B, Hornicek consistently proved his quality before earning a place in the first-team squad from the 2021/22 season onwards. It was midway through the 2024/25 campaign, however, that the Czech international cemented his place as SC Braga’s first-choice goalkeeper. On 23 January 2025, away to Union Saint-Gilloise in Belgium in a UEFA Europa League fixture (a 2-1 victory), Hornicek started the match and never looked back, remaining the club’s undisputed first-choice goalkeeper from that point forward.’