Does the coronavirus pandemic precipitate the bursting of the bubble in football business? "Yes", believe the experts interviewed by AFP, but only "in the short term" if there is not the establishment of a "regulation" to control inflation at work during the last decade.

The next "transfer of the century" will still wait. Without buyers, the nuggets Kylian Mbappé (21), Jadon Sancho (20) or Erling Haaland (19), main candidates to beat Neymar's record (222 million euros in 2017), are likely to remain this been in Paris and Dortmund ... Unless an unlikely discount transaction!

>> Read: Coronavirus: Fifa recommends soccer and wage deals to soccer clubs

"For a simple reason: the clubs will have big cash flow problems. With the uncertainty about TV rights and sponsorship income, it will become very complicated to commit to very large purchases, especially in England and Spain, championships that have pulled the market in recent years, "said AFP Jean-Pascal Gayant, sports economist.

"All countries are affected"

"Pay 100 million euros for a player next season, nobody thinks of it in Spain", supports his counterpart Fernando Lara, professor at the University of Navarre.

Dynamized by the madness of summer 2017, the overall amount of transactions has however increased from 2.66 billion dollars in 2012 to 7.35 billion in 2019, according to the TMS report of Fifa. A figure almost multiplied by three in the space of seven years.

"The sums cannot stay at the current level for the next two or three years, because all the countries are affected," added Uli Hoeness, the former president of Bayern Munich.

Decrease in value of transfers

According to a study by the International Center for the Study of Sport in Neuchâtel, the health crisis, which caused the interruption of competitions, is thus likely to cause a drop of 28% in the transfer value of players from the five major European championships, going from 32.7 to 23.4 billion euros.

What cause a sharp slowdown in the market for "top-players", in turn causing a "domino effect" on the other segments "from intermediate to more basic players", say several market players.

Main victims of the drying up of this "runoff"? Championships such as Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands and France which have bet on an economic model based on "player trading" thanks to an effective training policy.

Worried in the long term? "When football takes the lead again, we will come back to this inflation with ever higher wages, ever more expensive changes. I do not think that this will seriously jeopardize the system," said Jean-Pascal Gayant.

"One of the reasons is that I don't think there is the possibility of the existence of a global or supranational regulation to do otherwise. And Brexit has further reduced this possibility in Europe", he adds.

With AFP

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