The Death of the Transfer Announcement
At least at the top level.
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Now that’s all out of the way, let’s get into it….
The transfer window. Football’s answer to Christmas.
A time when every good manager who’s in his club’s good books can write a letter to Santa (their owner/director of football) and ask for a few players to improve their squads ahead of the upcoming season.
In the past, many of these negotiations were conducted in secret, but as the business of football has grown so has the business of covering it extensively.
We live in an attention economy, and the transfer window provides a perfect opportunity for media companies to keep football fans locked in by providing constant updates about the business their club is doing; up to the formal announcement (or in some cases the complete collapse of the deal).
But has this constant eye on transfer activity killed the hype and excitement behind signings? Are we all longing for a time when transfers were shrouded in intrigue instead of being out in the open for all to see?
Personally, yes, so in this (free) instalment of Played on Paper, I’m going to state my case for why the transfer window should go back to the dark ages so to speak (even if it’s never going to happen).
Before we move forward, I think I need to add the caveat that my exhaustion with the transfer news cycle is at the highest level. I feel like as you go further down the leagues where the spotlight is less bright, there is still magic to be had when it comes to transfers.1
Ok with that clarified let’s get started.
I use my phone way too much as it is; it’s a problem that I have tried to solve to no avail. The transfer window doesn’t help.
On a good day, I log onto social media and I am greeted by tweets from David Ornstein and Fabrizio Romano, on a bad one I have to sift through aggregators reporting on thousands of transfer rumours that will never come to fruition.
It probably wouldn’t be as bad an experience if I didn’t have to dig through seven Indykaila tweets to get to something of substance but at the same time, I feel like some journalists will recycle the same updates just to stay relevant in the transfer zeitgeist.
We are bombarded and it erodes our interest and intrigue.
This was the case even before the rise of social media, with rumours and potential moves pasted all over the newspaper’s back pages, but on a much smaller and less assertive scale.
When there is actual news, however, it feels like we’re along for every step of the ride. From every bid to every rejection, from personal terms being agreed upon to medicals being completed.
Managers walk into press conferences and are bombarded with questions about transfer rumours only to usually respond 'You’ll know when you know’. The ‘when’ in question is usually a few hours later when a journalist provides an update from one of their sources.
Sometimes clubs do manage to keep their business under wraps. Aston Villa basically announced Danny Ings before any media outlets reported that they were even looking at the striker.
Liverpool consistently manages to conclude their business within a few days of the media first reporting on the deal, therefore keeping the fans’ excitement levels up.
As a United fan, however (and I’m sure this is the same for others as well) our transfers are carried out with the discretion of an air raid siren.
By the end of the process, you’ve been exposed to the potential transfer for so long (and had the transfer confirmed by multiple outlets) that by the time they are pictured holding the shirt the hype has all but died down.
And what happens if your club is pursuing another target? Well, some fans have already become disinterested in the current transfer and want information on their next ‘shiny new toy’.
You begin to question whether there is any point in the club bothering with an announcement at all. Why bother making a fanfare when everyone has already moved on to go and listen to the next act?
Of course, many clubs will still persevere with their announcements regardless of whether the excitement is there for them or not.
The good one manages to recapture some of that magic. Burnley are now famous for their inventive announcement videos which some fans look forward to seeing more than their actual signings.
I think this is something that lower-league clubs do well. Without a corporate identity to conform to, they are allowed to have fun with their announcements.
However, for others, it does feel like an exercise in interaction farming at times.
Of course, I don’t want to criticise the social media teams. They work hard to quickly turn over an announcement video that will be potentially seen by millions of people and they deserve to be commended for it.
But when the substance is undermined it does feel like this is not something for the fans anymore, but something that can be shown to investors and sponsors in meetings to show off ‘Why they should be a part of their club.’
Maybe I’m tired and my position as both a writer and a fan has made me cynical, but this is a stance I have seen echoed by other fans on social media.
In so many ways, football is losing its magic; moving closer to becoming just a product rather than a sport that captures the hearts of millions daily.
Long gone are the days of me watching Paul Pogba x Stormzy on repeat when the Frenchman announced his move back to Manchester United at 1 am in the morning.
This newsletter has just been me shouting into the void, it’s not going to change anything about the multi-billion pound industry that has been constructed around reporting on transfers.
However, it has given me the chance to vent and hopefully, we start to see more perfect transfers in the future - an underreported process followed by a stellar announcement for the fans to all enjoy.
The transfer announcement is not dead in a literal sense, but I feel like in a spiritual sense it is losing the essence of what made it great.
Edit: Something that I forgot to mention (but Pauly Kwestel was kind enough to remind me), is that with the constant updates on transfers, there is no excitement on Deadline Day anymore. You just get to watch a reporter look miserable outside your training ground while you know your club is not going to sign anyone.
There is another conversation to be had about how the media covers clubs depending on how their names carry on social media, but that’ll be a different newsletter.