Loads of clubs outside the gilded Premier League have all but abandoned the idea of transfer fees out of practicality. Make one-year rolling deals the norm.
It’s a new season. The phony transfer war is almost over, so far as it exists outside the Premier League. It has become a financial arms race in the top flight, but outside of the league and certainly outside of the Championship, it barely exists at all.
Look at the list of signings; most deals are loans or free transfers. Occasionally, money changes hands but it is relatively unusual and small amounts.
Take Wimbledon for example: they have made 13 signings but none attracted a declared fee; they have transferred 14 out, none for money.
But there are signs the transfer madness is even leaking down the divisions with Birmingham and Wrexham last season. Plymouth have transferred 17 out and 12 in, making £1.6m profit. Huddersfield made 27 transfers in and out but only one for a fee – Alfie May at £1.4m.
Largely, it couldn’t be further from the gorging on money in the top flight. It’s the same game but the financial architecture is entirely different. Who, if anyone, benefits from this? In whose interest does it happen? There are knock-on fees, but that aside, why are players valued at say £100m? I know it’s said to be a market price for, say, a top striker. But is it? Only if you say so. There’s nothing natural or innate about it. It’s just a footballer, prone to loss of form and injury. There are no guarantees.
It’s not really an arms race you can win unless you operate a different regime and grow your own players to sell, but that’s anathema to the Premier League clubs. But the way it is now, with these values, you sell a player for £100m and you have to spend that £100m to replace them And if you don’t have to, what mug paid £100m in the first place?
Is there a different way? Fee inflation is out of control. Wouldn’t it be better if they didn’t exist? Most clubs have all but abandoned the very concept of paid transfers out of practicality. Football has long had a transfer culture, though it was never so divisive. But as it becomes more and more a culture that just a few clubs can indulge in, have the lower leagues developed a better way of operating out of necessity? After all, you usually only make transfers to buy different players and you could still do that, only without astronomical fees that few can afford. If the only costs were personal terms, would anyone really be worse off? It sounds radical but only because we accept this ludicrous system as normal, when it is anything but.
Right across Europe, most transfers are free already. Let’s outlaw transfer fees.
If a club wants to sell, they will; if a player wants to go, he will. Transfers just monetise ownership of employment contracts. Is that a good thing? If transfer fees didn’t exist, what would the net suffering be? Players would be free to move around if on rolling contracts. If your club is attractive enough, you’ll still attract players. I don’t see how anything would change except many clubs wouldn’t be shut out of doing business and agents wouldn’t take their cut out of football.
Isak would still move to Liverpool; Newcastle would still have to replace him. The only difference is everyone is available to be attracted to the club, rather than just who they can afford. That’s better, isn’t it?
Coupled with all contracts being one-year rolling arrangements, football could stop being a weird employer with weird deals that almost no other organisations have and adopt conventional ways of acquiring staff through terms and conditions. Cut down the effect of money and all that happens is the rich exert less power. Tell me that would be a bad thing. You can’t. It obviously wouldn’t be.
If you want more convincing, what’s so good with how it is? Answer me that. Has it made football more broadly competitive and varied or do the same rich clubs always win everything? These are clubs, not businesses. Trying to make profit by trading in humans smells bad and has been largely practically abandoned. Has the sky fallen in? Can change never happen? It’s plainly ridiculous, with only agents benefitting for doing very little but we take insane fees plucked out of the air for granted as if they’re natural.
The fact I know many of you’ll think abandoning transfer fees is mad and now are more interested in transfers than in football while favouring hanging on to the inequality they encourage, shows just how deep football’s capitalists have shaped the DNA of those fans happy to be on their knees fellating extreme wealth, worshipping all the devils they rode in on.
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