Transfer Market, White Heat

Why I'm giving up Fabrizio Romano's twitter account for Lent.

Bonjour à tous, this piece ended up shortlisted for the FWA Student Football Writer of the Year award! It was a great feather in my cap, even if I failed to tell the judging committee I wasn’t British.

Apologies for all the references if you’re not a football fan. I’ll have something artsier next month. I’m desperately waiting for Rory to release Janus ii. Enjoy.

It’s nearly midnight, and my eyes are shot bloody from staring at the screen. I've been tracking G-THFC, Tottenham's private jet, across the continent, waiting for a pair of magic feet to land in Luton and make the long drive to Haringey. A ginger from Sweden by way of Turin, winger Dejan Kuluevski. A flurry of texts in the group chat -

"He said it."

"Fabrizioooooo."

"Here we go."

My head drops away like a bowling ball, swinging me off my chair and onto the mattress. I won't sleep, I'm too wired, too much blue light - I don't care, we're winning the league.

Such is the nature of deadline day. 

In 1893, Willie Groves moved across Birmingham from West Brom to Villa, breaking the 100 quid transfer ceiling. Despite controversy over his "poaching" and a £25 wrist-slap from the FA, he scored 4 in 22 and helped bring the Villains a league title. 

One hundred years later, Neymar would move from Barcelona to Paris. Football club/Qatari soft-power generator PSG bought out his contract. Despite receiving a €222m package - equivalent to the GDP of Tuvalu, Barcelona was loath to let him go. They demanded the return of a €9m bonus, about 1/54th of their total wage bill. Since arriving, Neymar has scored 65 goals in 81 appearances. He considered a failure for not bringing PSG a European title through his right foot. 

The transfer market is breathlessly expensive, expansive and everlasting. Gone are the quiet post-season months where you would have to go outside and touch the grass. Football is now a summertime sport, as much played in boardrooms, restaurants and hotel suites as out on the pitch.

On 18 April 2021, out of these same rooms came the announcement of the European Super League. Put lightly, the world exploded. Gary Neville called it "an act of pure greed", and 79% of the UK agreed. It took thousands of protestors, a locker room revolt on Merseyside and Old Trafford's storming, but the people won out. After an apology from John Henry with as much emotion as a wooden board, the league was "disbanded." We pat ourselves on the back, went home and started scrolling Twitter to see how these executives would spend their billions next. 

The whiplash is quantifiable. In 2018, a study was published out of the University of Oviedo tracking transfer activity among the top European leagues. Their above data showed a tightening market amongst the top clubs (and inexplicably Swansea City), indicating "less uncertainty of outcome at the league level." Indeed, the network contains all ten ESL members. The evidence is clear. The transfer market tightens the grip of the elite clubs over their domestic leagues. It is a coil that'll soon spring into a new JPMorgan backed abomination no FA or other 16 can topple. 

Better players beget better results, and we want our teams to succeed regardless of the petrostate or oligarch that gets them there. But the more we see football as a series of eight-figure international exchanges and less as an on-field orchestra, the more we play into the hands of executives who seek to uproot the game from the grass entirely. This year, I'll be getting a good night's sleep on deadline day.

…probably.

References

Laurens, Julien. ‘Neymar: How the Record-Breaking €222m Move to PSG Unfolded’. The Guardian, 4 August 2017, sec. Football. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/aug/04/neymar-how-record-breaking-move-to-psg-unfolded.

Matesanz, David, Florian Holzmayer, Benno Torgler, Sascha L. Schmidt, and Guillermo J. Ortega. ‘Transfer Market Activities and Sportive Performance in European First Football Leagues: A Dynamic Network Approach’. Edited by Anthony C. Constantinou. PLOS ONE 13, no. 12 (19 December 2018): e0209362. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209362.

BBC News. ‘What Can I Buy for the Price of One Neymar?’, 2 August 2017, sec. World. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-40806702.