Football's Transfer Window Needs to Be Overhauled for the Good of the Game

It’s here. After weeks and months of perpetual speculation, gossip and conjecture, the summer transfer window will come to a close on Wednesday. Transfer deadline day—as it is now branded like some sort of national holiday—is the final chance for clubs to pick up that one signing who will make all the difference.

It’s a footballing supermarket sweep, playing at closing time on Christmas Eve.

Transfer deadline day is both the scourge of the sport and its guiltiest of guilty pleasures, with fans regarding the date almost as significant as a cup final day. Managers and clubs, however, aren’t so enthusiastic. They don’t relish an evening with Jim White quite as much.

"

Used to love that day. But Sky Sports and Jim White have just ruined it all completely with their overhype.

— Michael Wake (@MikeJWake) August 21, 2016"

Indeed, the final day of any given transfer window brings out the worst in football and those who associate with it. There are no trophies or titles at stake. How can one last opportunity to add a new squad member, fundamentally an exercise in admin, be so sexy?

Much of it is down to the creation that the media forges. Sky Sports trail and tease transfer deadline day as much as they would a Premier League game, with White their dominating alpha male of a frontman. He whips viewers into a frenzy to create an image of illusion rather than something that matters or even exists.

There's a skill to the art.

It’s why supporters celebrate deadline-day signings like they would a trophy. It’s why Arsenal fans took to the streets around the Emirates Stadium to hail the club-record capture of Mesut Ozil from Real Madrid on the final day of the summer transfer window three years ago. Fans invest in something that is not as important as they have been led to believe.

This is partly why so many support the motion to scrap transfer windows. Originally brought in to install stability to clubs who would have been perhaps fearful of losing their players all the way through the season, windows and deadline days have only served to heighten the sense of insecurity and instability in the sport. They have failed to fulfil their initial purpose.

Of course, journalists and the media as a whole wouldn’t welcome the scrapping of the transfer window, with gossip and rumours filling the pages of newspapers in the barren months between competitive football seasons. Internet forums would go on hiatus over the summer with nothing to drive clicks. Social media would be a quieter place, that’s for sure (maybe not a bad thing).

But from a purely footballing perspective, those who still believe in the worth of the transfer window and deadline day are few and far between. What or whom does it really serve? The sport without transfer windows would be a much more organic place. The midsummer tedium of never-ending gossip wouldn’t be missed. 

It has long been mooted that the transfer window, and consequently transfer deadline day, should be scrapped, with LMA chief Richard Bevan expressing his view that it’s not fit for purpose as long ago as 2011. "It doesn't do what it was looking to when it came in,” he said, as per BBC Sport. "It doesn't create stability, it doesn't create a level playing field, and certainly in the Football League they are very keen the domestic window is removed.”

But what would replace it?

FIFPro wants to overhaul the entire system, abolishing transfer fees and allowing freer market movement. That might be too idealist a concept, however. More feasible is that there will be only one transfer window, scrapping the midseason January window and closing the summer window before the start of the season. That would at least be a beginning.

Yet that would do little to reverse football's gossip culture. A season-long window would allow clubs to buy their way out of trouble or poach a striker just to play in a title-decider. That wouldn't work either.

Perhaps the window should be open for the first half of the season, closing for the second half. Surely the transfer-gossip saturation point would then be reached. It'd be the footballing equivalent of French families allowing children to drink wine from a young age—the idea being the lack of novelty would counter binge consumption. 

Football might have reached the point of no return, though. At least transfer windows bring speculation to a close for a few weeks, allowing the actual football to step into the spotlight. In a post-transfer-window age, it could be the case that the rumour mill continues to churn out speculation without exception. Football has got a taste for transfer gossip, and it won’t take too kindly to being weaned off it.

Authoritative bodies and organisations might have to step in, even if it’s not universally popular with those under the spell of White and Sky Sports’ transfer-deadline-day coverage. The January transfer window in particular is damaging to the game, doing more to harm to football than good.

The midseason opening of the transfer window compromises European competition, with clubs robbed of their best players before they have even reached the latter rounds. It’s also detrimental young players' development. When clubs talk about being down to the bare bones or in need of reinforcements, they turn to the transfer market rather than placing their faith in their own academy products.

The scrapping of the transfer window wouldn’t instantly address these issues, but the bluster and hype that is so counter-productive to so many wouldn't be so intense. That would at least be a start in sorting all that is wrong about football's transfer market. 

As it is, transfer deadline day is something almost entirely separate from football itself. It may be broadcast live on sports channels and concern football clubs, but for a sports story, there’s a distinct lack of sport. What genre of entertainment is transfer deadline day exactly?

With the slamming shut of every window, football moves closer to becoming purely sports entertainment. The detachment between what happens on the pitch and what is talked about and what receives attention gets starker.

For all concerned, the transfer window and deadline day along with it should be binned.

In the meantime, however, it must be endured. Desperate clubs will spend millions making signings they don’t need to make. They will have been sucked in by the illusion of transfer deadline day just as much as the fans watching on TV at home, rubbing their eyes in disbelief at the faux drama unfolding in front of them.

Power up those fax machines and look out for the yellow ties—transfer deadline day is back and there’s nothing to be done about it. For now.