Transfer rumours are not designed to be an exact science.
The everyday discourse of football has developed – or degenerated, dependent on your persuasion – into an industrialised jigsaw; different pieces being placed into different slots across the globe, for vastly different prices, by different actors.
This is not a pastime restricted to any one league or publication. Such gossip has become a lingua franca, connecting information-hungry supporters everywhere.
Figures mentioned, and sides linked, regularly stretch credulity. This all part of the game within a game.
Machiavellian clubs and agents feeding information to create a lucrative market for a player, or websites eager to extract profit from the punishing ‘clicks for cash’ nature of banner adverts, have added a flash of the outrageous to a colourful sub-genre of the sport.
This is the nature of a beast from which The Athletic showed Manchester United were linked to 113 players for January’s transfer window. They signed three.
There does, however, come a juncture point when it pays to become more discerning.
The ruinous impact of coronavirus on society, and subsequently professional football’s finances, has expedited this process.
Kalidou Koulibaly to Liverpool for £90 million is a glaring example. It is apposite to consider such a gargantuan fee as an anachronism, hailing back to the fevered bull market before a loathed pandemic struck.
This tale was reported by the august Gazzetta dello Sport on Sunday and, instantly, disseminated around the world.
Manchester United, Arsenal and Real Madrid are thrown in for good measure, plus a, proposed, trenchant desire from Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis there will be no negotiating down of the price.
The quality of Gazzetta’s journalism is beyond repute. This will be first-hand information sourced from the highest echelons at Stadio San Paolo and/or figures close to the Senegal centre-back.
There is a duty to publish such, purported, facts once received.
Equally, it becomes beholden on the reader to contemplate why this story has been put out there.
Even in buoyant times, the prospect of prudent Liverpool lavishing a club-high sum on this, reputed, target takes some digesting. Koulibaly turns 29 next month, by common consensus has endured his least-convincing campaign in Italy and performs in a position of strength for the would-be Premier League champions.
His presence, for a princely sum in transfer fee and wages, would block rising England international Joe Gomez’s path into the first team. It would also inhibit surprise 2018/19 hero Joel Matip’s return from long-term injury.
This comes at a moment when the Reds, according to The Guardian, have asked Timo Werner’s representatives for “more time” as they “wait to see what impact coronavirus will have on the next transfer window”.
This reticence becomes more telling when you consider that the exceptional Germany striker performs in a position of, relative, need. The same does not apply to Koulibaly.
The law of supply and demand have – at the risk of looking stupid at a future date when Koulibaly is, either, pictured patting the ‘This Is Anfield’ sign or completes a gargantuan move to another giant – forced Napoli’s sleight of hand.
They now find themselves in possession of a depreciating asset, whether through wider market trends or because of recent sub-par performances. An invidious position to be in when Corriere dello Sport stated in December 2018 that an offer worth €103m from Manchester United was spurned.
An advanced age also makes Koulibaly especially vulnerable to the possible €10 billion decline in player values across Europe’s top teams predicted by consultants KPMG in the wake of coronavirus.
The more suitors at play, whether real or imagined, the higher the price which can, ultimately, be demanded. Also, the bigger contract that can be requested by advisers.
This is, emphatically, not a new trick. But it is one that clubs will aim to deploy with greater frequency if they are to attract the type of enriched outlier – a majority Saudi Arabia-financed Newcastle United eager to advance with haste appears apt – who would lavish such a pre-coronavirus sum.
Why does this matter?
On the pitch, football’s product has never been better. Joyfully skilled and finely tuned athletes wow the world every weekend.
Off it, however, the conversation has become warped. A situation amplified when there is no live action to report on.
Transfer rumours act as a guilty pleasure in this process, fuelling hopes of better days and extending the entertainment. But this comes with the cost of further polluting much of the discussion.
Koulibaly to Liverpool for a world-record fee for a centre-back was highly unlikely in normal conditions. These are, distinctly, not normal conditions.
Many more spurious links will be forged as clubs become inventive with their use of the media if they want to extract value from a retracting market. But there is also immense worth to be found in supporters reappraising their relationship to the media, beginning with an unalloyed addiction to transfer rumours.
This is a chance to improve the cacophony which surrounds ‘The Beautiful Game’.
