By J Hutcherson - WASHINGTON, DC (Jan 31, 2012) US Soccer Players -- There's something vaguely unsettling about the final day of the January transfer window. We watch a sour European friends become the equivalent of the person trying to set a competitive eating record. It's intriguing, no doubt, yet at the same time slightly disgusting.
Moves and rumors of moves play out in a few ways. Clubs making a lot of noise while ultimately doing nothing, clubs spending wildly in the hope of the quick fix, clubs making strategic deals to block other clubs, and clubs making intelligent moves that should provide short and long-term benefits. Those categories are presented in order, with the percentages decreasing as we work down the list.
In other words, transfer deadline day provides an easy excuse to get things wrong. More often than not, the strategies in place are suspect. Most won't hold up to the type of extended scrutiny provided by a club's record over the rest of the season. That's not just the deals that get made, but the potential moves that crash against the closed window.
So far, the 2012 January transfer window has been underwhelming. The biggest moves from an American perspective were English Premier League clubs taking players on loan. There's an immediate downside to those deals, the relatively short amount of time involved. With the players involved doing well, it's almost an assessment of those clubs. What does it really say when you can bring in a short-term loan player who almost immediately changes your fortunes for the better?
For the player, it's the ultimate compliment. For the club? Well, it's not exactly an indication that this is a team that will move from strength-to-strength. That's especially true when loan moves have no chance of becoming permanent and aren't followed by additional transfers into the squad. Even worse when the team moves players out.
Contemporary European soccer has all but done away with the concept of the selling club. Historically, that was a team that provided a player an exit to a better club in exchange for the kind of transfer fee that could guarantee the selling team's economic future. With professional soccer, that's always a short-term future, but it provided a reward for player discovery and development.
Now? The bulk of the big money transfer fees are big clubs moving high dollar amounts among each other. There's a reason that the shock transfers almost always involve the elite in recent years. They're the ones willing and able to buy and sell established world all-stars. That's something that rarely happens further down the table in their own leagues, much less from the lower divisions.
The downside of contemporary player identification and development in Europe is that players from obscure clubs are identified and bought well before they're turning out for games with their original club. Wayne Rooney at Everton was a race to see where he ended up. The assumption was that would never be Everton, even though they were a Premier League club with potential. There's simply no financial model that allows a lesser club to resist the stack of cash on offer in return for a player.
As long as the transfer system as we know it is allowed to continue, this isn't likely to change. The current version is the result of the period of time when a selling club was possible. the system has changed, moved on to function as a clearinghouse for those willing to spend on the top tier of players and a redistribution of other players at various financial tiers.
Moving between those tiers becomes very difficult. A good Premier League team without the significant financial backing to make them a very good Premier League team and ultimately a very good European team aren't in the conversation. Not really at least. Their moves are conducted with a very real handicap, with the teams already in that elite category more than willing to demonstrate what it really means to spend.
Big clubs don't need a sale and will wait until the players they really want can participate in all of their tournaments immediately. No cup ties for European or domestic competitions, and no need of the desperation day discount. That severely limits that tier of player moves.
That's why we see teams in lesser tiers moving players around between themselves. It's like they're shopping at different stores. Maybe the occasional luxury item will show up as part of a special sale in the discount retailer, but everybody knows the people who can really afford that sort of thing are spending their money somewhere else.
Comments, questions, solutions to problems that have yet to present themselves. Please, tell me all about it.
More from J Hutcherson:
