Club Football: Closing the summer transfer window earlier
There is a charm in football that one quite doesn’t understand. Someone who loves football will tell you that the sport is addictive. However, the addiction doesn’t mean it is fatal in large doses; in fact it’s quite the opposite. Football is a form of a therapy. Something that makes a person feel better about himself and people around him.
Fans support numerous teams through thick in thin. Over the past decade teams such as Liverpool and Arsenal have had considerably less success than the leading pack which includes Barcelona, Chelsea and Manchester United. Does this mean that fans changed their teams? Yes in some cases but did they change the sport? No. Why is that?
Football in this case is unique. When a cricket match goes wrong, fans refuse to watch another match ever again because of the sheer disappointment. Actually this in itself is quite a naive thing to say because it is not the sport but the team that has become the cause of disappointment. A football fan on the other hand, curses and whines but when the next weekend comes along and brings with it a new round of matches, you will find a sad old man sitting in front of the TV shouting those same old curses.
Another thing that is common in many true football fans is that no matter how boring a football match becomes, they will come back to watch the next one without any guarantee of the new one being as entertaining as any other program on T.V. People usually ask football fanatics as to why they subject themselves to such torture; however there is no concrete answer to this question because football fans are in love with the sport and sometimes such admiration is not logical.
One thing that football fans can’t stand though is tampering with the game. A game has certain rules that should be observed and when a violation of these laws occurs, a riot like condition emerges in your stereotypical football fan. Quite recently in the Manchester City versus Liverpool match, Liverpool’s midfielder Javier Mascherano went on a strike because his proposed transfer move to Barcelona was not coming through.
It was indeed a sad case of a child like behaviour from a professional footballer but the thing to be noted here is that, why was this player given the opportunity to do so. Club football has two seasonal transfer windows, one opens on the 1st of January and closes on the 31st of January. While the other one is the summer transfer window which opens up at the end of May and closes on 1st September. The “Mascherano” problem came to the forefront due to the fact that the summer transfer window closes after the season has already begun, thus it has the potential to ruin pre 1st September encounters such as the Manchester City versus Liverpool match.
Manchester City totally dominated Liverpool and won the match by an eventual score of three goals to nil but it could have been a lot different had Mascherano decided not to throw a fit and conduct himself like an adult professional footballer that he is. It will be foolish to say that this was the sole reason for Manchester City’s dominance but it was a huge contributing factor to Liverpool’s defeat on Monday night. However, it will also be adolescent to suppose that this was a one-off case. Due to the transfer windows limit till the 1st of September, many more matches can be ruined due to such behaviour, where managers are in a fix with regards to their players.
One thing that UEFA and FIFA can do is to reduce the amount of time that the summer transfer window is open for. From the month of June till the 1st of August is a pretty good time span for any potential transfer business. This will prompt agents and clubs alike to do their financial dealings and contract signings before the season starts in the middle of August.
Once the season gets under way, footballers and managers will be able to concentrate on their respective teams rather than indulging in the volatile business of transfers and contracts. This is the least that football’s governing bodies can do to provide start of the season competitive football to fans across the world.
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