It was mid-March. Thomas Meunier was said to be on the verge of signing for Borussia Dortmund, whom PSG had just eliminated in the Champions League. His Paris contract was due to expire at the end of June, so it was a good way to secure his future with a head start. Except that two weeks later, all this no longer makes sense, the coronavirus broke football. The transfer window is no exception, even if there are still one or two agents a little lost to continue making phone calls to club presidents. Thierry Gomez, that of Le Mans FC, almost enjoys it.
"There must be agents who are located I know not where abroad, who must not be aware of the global pandemic, because they still offer players. They ask us what our priorities are for next season. But everything is stopped. We were supposed to have a meeting with our recruiters but we decided to cancel it. With agents - not those who live in a cave, the others - one is hardly more active even if the telephone never really stops ringing. Yvan Le Mée: “We suspended all discussions with the clubs on the decisions that had to be made. It is on the last ten games that we choose the players' choices for the coming season. ”
"Stay alive" ... French pro football faced with the dread of bankruptcy https://t.co/cdaulDBuBr
- 20 Minutes (@ 20Minutes) March 26, 2020Towards an XXL transfer window from August to the end of December?
Everything is stopped, therefore, and we do not know how to restart the machine, or when the domestic and international seasons will come to an end. It's a safe bet that these will occur after the end of the players' contract in the case of Meunier. Fifa is currently working on an almost coherent reorganization of football and recommends to exceptionally extend the contracts which expire in June until the new end of the season. Ditto for the transfer window, which will probably have to be pushed back. According to the latest news, a giant transfer window from August to December 31 is mentioned. And too bad for sports equity. Yvan Le Mée, agent:
The best solution to relaunch everything would be the free market. I hear a lot saying that it is not possible, that during the competitions the players can leave. But today if there are economic problems [the threat of bankruptcy hangs over the clubs] that can be resolved by transfers, we must not miss them. We will have to save the furniture. "
We'll have to be tricky, too. The forced break of world football empties the coffers of sometimes suspended clubs, who bet everything on the last payment of annual TV rights and find themselves naked. France has started short-time working and Spain is following suit. It would be more necessary that the end of the season is done only behind closed doors to push the leaders of European clubs, large or small, further. All this will in any case not be without consequences for the next transfer window. Thierry Gomez: “there will necessarily be an impact on the level of the transfer window, everyone will have to make their reservations. Where clubs could put 15-20 million on a player, on arrival these may not be able to put more than five. "
A summer transfer window based on the exchange?
Yvan Le Mée agrees with this and goes even further. The health crisis will lead to a strong return to the exchange of players between clubs, provided that all parties show good will. "We're going to see a transfer window. We are tending towards stabilization in terms of price and in terms of number of operations. I can see the big clubs which have three, four big salaries of players on whom they count less to offer exchanges. We are going to enter into another approach, which is not bad anyway. At time T, we are not going to talk about transfers at 30, 40, 50 million and even less flights to the Neymar. Everyone is blocked, even the top 5. We get into a blocking problem. However, if the big clubs cannot make operations, the small clubs will not make either. "
The theory of runoff and the transfer window knocked out in one go by the coronavirus, we had not seen it coming. Until the situation clears up, clubs can still do like Thierry Gomez at Le Mans and rest on their basic plan. “We still know roughly which players we want, because recruiting is not something that is done between May and June, but throughout the year. And besides, it's good, right now it's not the time that is lacking to make plans for the comet.
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