At 00:36 on Saturday 4 July, Khamis Al Hammadi left China for Bosnia. The 27-year-old Emirati right-back moved from Sichuan to Srebrenik for 2,375,541 SVC — and if that fee looks suspiciously precise when you do the sums, that's because it is. It's 12.0 times his book value of 197,962 SVC: the absolute maximum the transfer auction lets anybody pay.

Now, I check a deal before I shout about it. So here's what that headline number actually bought — on both ends.

The club that finished last just went shopping

Srebrenik are not a name you've heard. They ended Season 3 in BIH Division 2 dead last — 13th of 13 — with 22 points, five wins all campaign and 64 goals conceded. Four seasons into this game, they have never once climbed out of the Bosnian second tier. Their squad is a museum of thirty- and forty-somethings on an average wage of 1,591 SVC.

And then, in one July night, manager TeixeiraBoav emptied the vault.

Al Hammadi is now, at a stroke, the club's best-rated (66) and most valuable player, on 4,470 SVC a week — nearly triple the squad average and comfortably their top earner. His fee alone is more than the combined book value of Srebrenik's entire 27-man squad (1.52M SVC).

Three hours later, at 03:22, they did it again: 22-year-old German forward Ibrahim Madougou arrived for 2,331,000 SVC — also, to the decimal, exactly 12x his value. Two signings, three hours, 4,706,541 SVC. For a team that won five games last season, that isn't a tweak. It's a statement.

Why Sichuan let a starter walk

The other half of this story is the seller — and Sichuan didn't sell because they were skint. They're sitting on 12.5M SVC in the bank.

They sold because they'd just been relegated. Sichuan finished 20th of 22 in China's top flight last season — 30 points, 24 defeats — dropping into CHN Division 2 for the first time in four seasons after three straight years in the big league. A relegated side rebuilds, and Al Hammadi was surplus: a tidy squad man, yes, but not even one of Sichuan's three best players in a struggling team.

So when a bottom-of-Bosnia club offered the ceiling price, the maths did the talking. Sichuan bought Al Hammadi for 949,212 SVC back in June 2025. They've just sold him for 2.38M — a profit of 1,426,329 SVC, a 150% return in thirteen months on a player who wasn't in the XI. That's not a football call. It's a trader's call, and a very good one.

What it means

For Sichuan: pure business. A fringe asset flipped at the very top of the market, and an even fatter war chest — north of 12M — to rebuild a top-flight squad down in the second tier.

For Srebrenik: a genuine gamble. Al Hammadi and Madougou haul the spine of the team up several rating points overnight, and both are rare things around here — players under 30. But a right-back and a forward don't win a division on their own, and everything around them is still a cast of Bosnian journeymen the wrong side of 33. Spend 4.7M in a night and last place stops being an excuse — it becomes the starting point.

The cheque's cashed. Now Srebrenik have to play.