Трансферийн зах зээлийн эмх замбараагүй байдал ба ёс зүйн хэм хэмжээний асуудал

There is always a series of shocks when those used to the regulated world of American sport encounter the anything-goes culture of European football.

Ivan Gazidis, previously Major League Soccer’s deputy commissioner, had just become Arsenal’s chief executive in January 2009 when he likened the European transfer market to the “Wild West”. John W Henry, majority owner of the Boston Red Sox, used the same phrase after adding Liverpool to Fenway Sports Group’s investment portfolio the following year. Todd Boehly, part-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, expressed his surprise about football’s “freestyling” business practices and unregulated markets when, in 2022, he reflected on BlueCo’s bruising first year as owners of Chelsea.

It is why the anger expressed over the last few days at Chelsea and Everton, after their respective moves to sign Lamine Camara and Folarin Balogun from Monaco collapsed shortly before Tuesday’s transfer deadline, will meet with unsympathetic shrugs. You’re thrashing around in the final hours of a summer-long transfer window, trying to cobble together a deal at the last moment, and you’re shocked when another party — a club, a player, an agent — moves the goalposts or simply backs out? Seriously?

Neither Premier League club went as far as a public statement, but journalists were left in no doubt about the desire to point fingers at Monaco and, in Everton’s case, at Balogun. Sources at Chelsea, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation, accused Monaco of unprofessionalism for reneging on a €54million (£47m) deal agreed just hours earlier. Similar messages came from Everton, who were unhappy about the conduct of both Monaco and Balogun after the forward pulled out of the transfer at the last moment.

The accusations were countered robustly the next day by Monaco’s chief executive Thiago Scuro, who defended both the club’s right to pull the plug on Camara’s Chelsea deal and Balogun’s right to jilt Everton. Balogun, who spent most of the day at Everton’s training ground, was unsettled by the way things went ominously quiet after his medical examination, when the club began scrambling in search of alternatives (Manchester United’s Joshua Zirkzee and Aston Villa’s Tammy Abraham) and trying to renegotiate the payment terms with Monaco before telling the USMNT forward they were ready for him to sign after all.

“There is no reason that this kind of discussions or dynamic on the last day of the transfer window… (makes Monaco) the bad guys in the room,” Scuro told reporters. “That Monaco is not fair, that Monaco is not right, that everybody in the football industry is fair and nice, just Monaco is not. (It is) too much.”

Quite so. It’s the transfer market. All “part of the game”, as Scuro put it. There are no rules. Well, there are, but the point Gazidis and Henry made years ago was that in many instances clubs, players and agents pay lip service to them — and sometimes not even that. If there is even an informal code of conduct, it would be naive to think it is binding until the last piece of documentation is submitted and approved.

The sport is more regulated now than it was back then; some would say it has become too regulated, others nothing like enough. But in many respects, the “Wild West” label still applies, and never more so than in the frenzied final hours of a transfer window.

Monaco might well have moved the goalposts — or, figuratively speaking, dismantled them — in the Camara case. But this kind of thing happens on deadline day. With the clock ticking, panic sets in. Outlandish asking prices are met, or dropped significantly, deals are struck and then, as the deadline draws closer — sometimes because a medical has brought up something that was not known previously, sometimes simply because one or other party is trying it on — there is a sudden desire to negotiate. And sometimes, as in the real estate market, a deal that suits all parties collapses simply because something unexpected has happened higher up the chain.

This time last year, Liverpool executives were livid when Crystal Palace, hours after accepting their bid for Marc Guehi, pulled the plug on a £35million deal at the demand of their then-coach Oliver Glasner because no alternative had been signed before the transfer deadline. It was a significant blow to Liverpool, particularly when he went on to join Manchester City in January, but they had had the entire summer to try to sign a player Palace were always going to struggle to replace.

Yes, the goalposts had moved, first in Liverpool’s favour and then back the other way. But guess what? It was a football player transfer. There are emotions, egos and other market dynamics involved. The only certain way to avoid last-minute drama is to get a deal done early. And the only certain way to get a deal done early is to make an offer that cannot be refused.

Perhaps the ultimate example of this came in the summer of 2015 with Real Madrid’s pursuit of David de Gea.

This was at the peak of the goalkeeper’s powers and Madrid were desperate to sign him as the successor to Iker Casillas, who, at the age of 34, had signed for Porto. In the final hours of the transfer window, after a summer-long stand-off, United accepted a deal that would see Madrid pay €39.5million (£29.5m at exchange rates at the time) to sign De Gea, with Keylor Navas moving to Manchester as his replacement.

But the transfer fell through at the last moment, with United failing to complete and submit the paperwork in time — not because of a faulty fax machine, as legend would have it, but because it had been left too late to process.

David de Gea saw a move to Real Madrid collapse in 2015 (Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)

Madrid issued a lengthy statement the following day, highlighting how they had done “everything necessary — and at all times — to implement these two transfers”, saying that the last-minute nature of the negotiation had been on United’s insistence. But, again, sympathy with either club should be in short supply. Two of the biggest clubs in the world had been so reluctant to blink first, after a summer-long stand-off, that they left themselves with only hours to do a deal. The deal collapsed and De Gea, now at Fiorentina, never did get his “dream” move to Real Madrid.

There can be sympathy with players at seeing a transfer fall through. There can certainly be sympathy with managers — particularly with Everton’s David Moyes, who could not possibly have imagined, after spending so much of last season lamenting his attacking options, that he would end up with Thierno Barry as his only centre-forward, with Beto sold to Fiorentina just hours earlier in the naive belief that the Balogun deal was a formality.

Sympathy with supporters comes easily, too. Thursday’s statement from Everton’s Fan Advisory Board, referencing a “predictable last-minute scramble to fix long-standing squad weaknesses that have been evident for years”, was right on the nose. And whatever Monaco’s shenanigans, it seems extraordinary that Chelsea, having known during the final weeks of last season that Enzo Fernandez wished to leave, should end the summer without having signed a replacement.

They cannot blame it on a broken promise. Promises mean nothing in the transfer market. So, in some cases, do deadlines of the type Chelsea had tried to impose when they gave Manchester City until 5pm on August 14 to submit an offer for Fernandez. It was an entirely reasonable suggestion, but, as City indicated at the time, it was meaningless because they knew Chelsea would sell if a certain valuation was matched. That the projected £125m Fernandez deal finally went through late on Tuesday, even after Chelsea were dashed in their attempts to replace him with Camara, was proof of that.

Chelsea made great play of how, in contrast to Monaco’s behaviour, they had rubber-stamped the Fernandez deal because it was the right and professional thing to do. But this was the same club described by Paris Saint-Germain officials as a “class A circus” after the documentation for Hakim Ziyech’s proposed loan move to the French club on deadline day in January 2023 was not completed in time.

On that occasion, Chelsea rejected PSG’s claims, saying the delay had been caused by a technological issue (no, not a fax machine). But on that same transfer deadline day, Chelsea agreed a move to send winger Omari Hutchinson on loan to West Bromwich Albion, only for that deal to collapse after a) a hold-up in West Brom’s attempts to make room for him by shipping out another player and b) a further delay at the Chelsea end.

Given how many other deals Chelsea were processing that day — including the signing of Fernandez from Benfica and the sale of Jorginho to Arsenal — it was hardly surprising that one or two deals were simply not completed in time. The more plates you’re trying to spin, the more likely it is that one or more will smash.

Club executives can throw around words like “unprofessional” and “circus”, but the reality is that so much of the transfer market — particularly in those frantic final days and hours before the deadline — comes down to desperation, panic, ego, impulse, nerve or a combination of all those things.

What felt like a firm agreement, months in the making, can so easily be left to fall by the wayside. Yes, there are rules of engagement, but they mean little at the best of times. And when the clock is ticking louder than ever and the deadline looms large, those rules frequently go out of the window.