The Death of the Transfer Window | OneFootball

With the summer transfer window deadline day approaching, we take a look at how the excitement around what used to be a circled date on the calendar has completely vanished.

Transfer deadline day used to be an event. I remember as a kid staying up until midnight watching Sky Sports News, hoping for some big signings to come through before the deadline. Crowds used to gather behind the reporter, causing chaos, thus creating extra entertainment for us onlookers.

Nostalgia aside, this was what the window used to be about. It wasn’t hyper-detailed reporting; it was the surprise. Think Mesut Ozil’s move to Arsenal. Out of nowhere, and boom, a star from Real Madrid had swapped sunny Spain for the city of London. But those days are long gone. Now, the focus is more on clarity, lifting the curtain and revealing all the intricacies of the transfer window, removing the allure, the shock factor and above all — the excitement.

The golden age of transfer gossip was a wonderful time to exist. It was a time when in-the-know (ITK) accounts were run by someone in their bedroom, rather than actual professionals like Fabrizio Romano and his team. Fans used to scour newspapers, watch the news, and debate on forums on what they’d heard from their next-door neighbor’s bricklayer.

It was Jim White’s gold tie before they ruined it, turning it into a cringey, gimmicky piece of content. It was turning on Sky Sports News live ticker in the middle of English class to see if your club had signed or sold someone. Rumors always felt outrageous, but what made them worthwhile was the hope that it could happen or at least something similar. It was a time when sagas drew excitement, whereas now they’re tiresome. The fun was in the not knowing until the player had the shirt in his hands.

The rise of insiders has changed the game. ITK accounts were meme-worthy back in the day, with Indy Kaila leading the way. They’d tweet anything and everything in the hope that they’d catch a few fish. But no one with any substance believed a word. Why would you? @FootballTransferzGossip was hardly a credible source.

Romano, however, changed the game. He’s seemingly cemented himself as the ITK. The guy with contacts everywhere, he has become the beacon of a done deal. The phrase “here we go” is the most powerful in football transfers, and when you hear it, you know it’s (pretty much) official. You’d think seeing that “here we go” would invoke the same excitement as the yellow “Breaking News” banner on Sky Sports. However, it’s not the same when Romano has tweeted 30 times before that about every stage of the deal along the way.

Reporting transfers is now about precision. Razor-sharp accuracy is required, as that’s now the norm. Romano is joined by David Ornstein as the top guns running the game. They’re reporting on transfers regularly, and with their connections, seemingly know the most.

One big issue now is that clubs and agents control the narrative. Allegedly, certain journalists are paid to direct the story a certain way to influence a club’s or players’ decision, with the main driver being financial gain for certain parties involved.

Take the Alexander Isak situation for example. One of the world’s top strikers, Isak has been in a long-drawn stalemate with Newcastle United, and hasn’t played for the club since last May’s EPL finale against Everton. While it’s been clear that Isak wants to leave the club, Romano and Ornstein have been in control of the narrative, with the latter even making the rounds on TV to discuss the ordeal ad nauseam. The influence these guys have on the market is crazy.

And that’s where the transfer window has died a death. I don’t care about it anymore. I no longer scroll transfer news feeds. I no longer care about Deadline Day, especially when it now shuts at 7 p.m. UK time. I have heard about every deal worth any salt for weeks on end because the reporting has been so hyper-detailed and in my face, I’d have to have lived in a cave for the entire summer to not know about it.

Journalists know everything, and social media has too much control. You can’t have a surprise announcement from a club anymore because they have to create 10 TikToks, do a full photoshoot, and create a marketing plan before even announcing a player, which inevitably means some staff member working at the stadium has snapped a pic of the new signing and plastered it on Facebook.

Gone are the good days of the transfer window and, cynically, the transfer window joins a lot of other things in the game that have lost its sparkle. Excitement is being drained from the sport with every season we endure, and sooner rather than later, we will be out of fun to be had. Will we ever go back to where we once were? Absolutely not. And there’s nothing a surprise announcement of Luuk De Jong to Porto can do about it.