Murky world of transfer window may soon become clearer
Small wonder there is a growing pressure for the system to be reformed, or even abolished — which is what the international players’ union FIFPro says it now wants.
The winter window is a showcase for some of the worst aspects of the present system. Apart from England most major European leagues have some sort of break, but even in countries such as Poland clubs have to face the possibility of losing players in mid-season, with a very brief time to replace them.
This year all those involved — clubs, players and agents — know that in six months’ time the transfer market may well be turned upside down, and that players will be away with their national teams for anything up to a couple of months. So the time available to clubs to strengthen or restructure their squads will be much reduced, and forward planning much harder. The next four weeks will be full of moves behind the scenes and pre-contract negotiations as all parties jockey for position.
It seems a bizarre way to run a sport, let alone an industry, even if one or two others have wandered down the same path, such as rugby league. For FIFPro: “The transfer system fails 99% of players around the world, it fails football as an industry and it fails the world’s most beloved game. Football’s governing bodies, clubs and leagues claim the transfer system is necessary to ensure competitive balance, whereby in fact it creates a spiral of economic and sporting imbalance, which only benefits the richest 1% of clubs and player agents.”
FIFPro also claims that “as much as 28% — €550m — of the global transfer market goes to agents and is therefore lost to the game”.
You can argue about the figures. Fifa’s Transfer Matching System, which polices international moves, handled €2.43 billion worth of transfer deals during the two transfer windows between January 1, 2013 and September 2, 2013. They say that declared commission to intermediaries was worth €122m. Whichever way you look at it, there is a huge amount of money involved and it’s growing way ahead of any normal market indicator, by 29% year on year.
In fact football transfers are far less money-driven than this implies. The great majority of players — seven out of 10 in 2011 — change clubs as free agents. Over half of them had been on contracts that expired, the rest had their contracts terminated early.
When money is involved, it is not always a transfer fee as we normally understand it. It can be a conditional fee — like a fee payable if a player makes more than a certain number of appearances for his new club — or it can be training compensation or a so-called solidarity contribution, calculated as a percentage of a transfer fee.
The usual transfer fees are also quite low compared to the figures that hit the headlines. Back in 2011 the median fee was about $200,000 (€145,000) — ie half were for less than that.
Nevertheless FIFPro believes the whole system, including the calculation of training compensation, is wrong and says it will take legal action at European level to get it banned.
Whether this is a realistic threat is open to doubt. It would certainly take some time: the Bosman case took almost five years to go through the system, and this raises some even more basic issues of principle.
More likely FIFPro’s aim is to get some serious talks underway. The transfer system is currently being reviewed by a working group that includes representatives of Uefa, the European Clubs Association, the European leagues and the players, and FIFPro stated back in September that “if a transfer system is to be maintained, we must establish a balance of power between clubs and players”. The key aim is transfer compensation should be based on contractual terms, not fees.
That would have huge implications for the way players are paid, possibly with salaries linked to service and/or performance. The rich would probably get even richer. But it might just help to end the excesses and distortions of the transfer market and improve the sport as a whole.
