The window of January 2021 has adapted to the corona's impact on the global economy • The result: a 65 percent drop in spending by the big five leagues, which this year saved 667 million euros
Davis.
About £ 78 million cheaper than Van Dyke
Photography:
From Instagram
Luis Alonso, a players' agent from the big Spanish agency "Stellar", spent the last day of the winter transfer window shopping.
"Yes, I'm in the supermarket, buying food for my wife," he told El Pais, presenting the situation he and his colleagues are in these days.
"It's a lot worse than we imagined it would be," Alonso added, "I have already stopped trying. There are other agents who keep calling teams and trying to transfer players, but I have decided not to try again."
Of course, not everyone acted like Alonso.
Many agents worked, bid, sniffed, transferred and completed transactions.
Still, Liverpool regained two brakes in a matter of hours, Southampton, Brighton and Manchester United thickened the squad, Sevilla added Papo Gomes, Hertha Berlin were upgraded with penetration drugs and Italy, France, Turkey and Scotland were also welcoming.
Even Jesse Lingard has found a new home in West Ham.
Apparently everything is fine, but at the moment it is clear that European football is not in an easy financial problem. "This is the transfer window that the teams have stopped spending," was the title of "Athletic", and there is no other way to present it. In each of the five major leagues January transfer window Was particularly frugal and much narrower than in recent years.According to the transfer market website, which combines all transfers, Spanish league teams spent only 21 million euros in January compared to 151 million a year ago. The Premier League dropped from 242 million to 87 and the Bundesliga cut from 197 to 49 million. "It was a low-cost transfer window," Alonso concluded, and the numbers reinforce that. Compared to January 2020, there is a 65% drop in spending by the top five leagues in January 2021.
Without much imagination
The TV tricks - the illusion of fans in the stands with the help of graphics stunts and recordings of cheering voices - managed to blur the grim reality a bit.
Following the corona virus and its aftermath, football has been going on for several months without the people paying good money to see it.
According to Antonio Saines of the "Bahia" players' agency, "the teams put 50-40 percent of their annual budget that was supposed to come from ticket sales and subscriptions, and they now understand that the fans will not come and that the money will not come in."
In the absence of this revenue, the teams came this January with more survival ambitions than with ambitions to find the next Bruno Fernandez.
The result of this shortfall is a transfer window that has mostly included questions, exchanges, small and cheap purchases, and not even a single deal that is close to igniting the imagination.
According to Ryan Harper, another agent, the situation has additional effects: "Teams are cutting the length of the contract. Today, players sign for two or three years, no one dares to commit to 6-5 years."
When you add to all this the new Brexit restrictions, which make it difficult for managers in England to understand who is allowed to bring in and who is not, you get a frugal and careful transfer window, which raises a lot of questions about the future.
Estimates are that at least in the near future the player market will be different from what we have become accustomed to seeing in recent years.
The combination of the Corona with the Brexit may lead to some trends that will allow teams to get through the difficult period, and still upgrade with new players.
"We expect big teams to make one big purchase each season, rather than 3-2, as they used to do," said Doron Salomon, of one of the world's largest agencies, adding: further".
New and cheap markets
For the small groups, the change may be much more significant.
Beyond the fact that Brexit is changing the rules of the game in the Premier League, which is the biggest market, the economic crisis brought on by the Corona virus will force the middle tier and down immediately.
It is estimated that these teams from the major leagues will try to open up to new markets - and enter territories that were reserved for the intermediate leagues of the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and so on.
It is expected that teams from Spain, England, Italy and Germany will try to find bargains in places like Ecuador and Colombia, Africa and Asia, which they will buy cheaply, hoping to sell in the future for a higher amount.
"We need to prepare ourselves for a situation where we will hardly see expensive deals in the coming years," Salomon clarifies.
In previous years, moves by Joshua King to Everton or Tacomi Minamino to Southampton would have been under the radar as they came, but in 2021 they will be the highlight of the January transfer window.
There is no doubt that this is a serious anti-climax - just to mention that in 2020 Bruno Fernandez arrived for United and in 2018 Virgil Van Dyke for Liverpool - but this is probably the reality we need to get used to.
The world is hurt, and glittering European football is not immune.
"We'll have to wait and see what happens in the summer of 2021," concluded Dan Jones, who specializes in business and sports. "One thing's for sure, we don't expect anyone to break a transfer record any time soon."