With the Club World Cup, this was always going to be a bit of a strange transfer window.
An “Exceptional registration period” opened on 1 June and closed yesterday. The 10 day registration period was to “allow clubs playing in the tournament to sign new players before it started”. And as such, for fairness, all clubs across the world were also allowed to sign players.
Rather than just say “we will leave the window open for the duration of the summer”, leagues have closed the registration period for 6 days and it reopens again on 16 June.
This is because Premier League regulations state that the summer window must open “at midnight on the date 12 weeks prior to the date on which it is to conclude.” That is Monday 16 June, when the actual transfer window will open, closing 12 weeks later, on Monday 1 September.
That means there was a mini deadline of last night for clubs in the Club World Cup to sign players. For clubs not in the competition, they did not really care.
The last 10-days has seen Manchester City go aggressive in the market. The talk was they only wanted to complete deals that could be done before the Club World Cup started.
City have spent over £100m on Rayan Aït-Nouri, Marcus Bettinelli, Rayan Cherki and Tijjani Reijnders. Whilst some will commend them for getting deals done early, it means they might miss out on other players that could come available later in the window. By limiting yourself only to players who were available for a 10-day period is very restrictive.
Chelsea meanwhile spoke about the “Club World Cup tax”. This was having to pay a premium to get a deal done quickly.
We all know transfer negotiating takes time. Most deals do not happen quickly. By limiting yourself to signing a player before the 10 June deadline, you could end up paying a premium as you are giving yourself less time to negotiate.
If you are not bound by the deadline, you have more time to have talks, to play games, and to seek alternatives.
We then have the unseen deadline of PSR.
The longer we operate under PSR, and the UEFA FFP version, the more we learn. And what the financial regulations do is create an unseen deadline on 30 June.
The reporting window for PSR is 1 July to 30 June. That means a player sold on 1 June 2025 goes into the 2025/26 reporting year, whilst a player sold on 30 June 2025 is included in the 2024/25 reporting year.
Teams struggling to meet the PSR requirements will look to offload players before 30 June so that they can make ends meet. This means that for buying clubs, with no PSR concerns, there might be some home grown bargains to be had before his date.
Likewise, clubs who have no PSR concerns for 2024/25 might be reluctant to sell players before 1 July as they do not really “need the income”. Meanwhile, a £50m pure profit for home grown player such as Martin Zubimendi can give their summer transfer window a huge bump if they hold off until 1 July. Selling before this date can be seen as a bit of a waste.
This creates a bit of a backlog where teams who do not need to sell will be trying to slow down deals. Hold them back until July so that the incoming fee can be reported in the next year. This is certainly something most of us have not thought of before.
And in terms of the buying club, they would not be too concerned about their deal being delayed until 1 July.
Beyond the PR and fans crying on social media about “we have not signed anyone yet”, there is very little disadvantage for a club to do rush through a deal between 16 June and 30 June.
For a start, it would mean that none of the transfer fee will hit the 2024/25 accounts – both real accounts and those prepared for PSR. Secondly, a club will save on wages.
Yes, that might only be £500k if it is a top player, but every little counts!
You might also be able to agree a little discount in the transfer fee if you agree to delay it for 2-3 weeks and not pursue any other targets. The opposite of if a buying club wants to rush a deal through.
Finally, teams will not be returning to full training until July. So by agreeing to delay the transfer until July, you are not disadvantaging yourself.
There is also talk over other deadlines clubs are looking at, such as official accounting reporting in their individual countries and the tax they would have to pay.
The talk was Real Sociedad were looking to delay the transfer as if they sold Zubimendi in June, they would be less likely to spend the profits and would be hit with a larger tax bill. Whereas once you have spent the profits (which would happen in July), you then offset the income of the sold player against the expenditure of players coming in, thus reducing your tax bill.
It will now be interesting to see whether Martin Zubimendi is announced on 16 June, as soon as the new window opens. If it does happen, it will show that the delay was only due to Spain playing in the Nations League final.
I would not be surprised if it is announced that the deal is done across social media accounts during that week, but we do not see an official announcement from Arsenal until 1 July.
Always learning, trying to understand why deals that seem done are not going through quickly…
Have a good Wednesday.
Keenos
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 