The World Cup is over, which means soccer fanatics the world over are flocking back to their perennial summer obsession: the transfer window. The mechanics of the window may be a little foreign to newly minted American soccer fans, but really it’s just a free-for-all in which the richest clubs across Europe vacuum up all rising stars, throwing egregious sums of money into black holes as they go.
The largest European leagues (the Premier League, La Liga, etc.) don’t play in the summer, they do business. The transfer window is when they’re allowed to buy and sell players. Strangely enough, the window overlaps with the beginning of the season, so oftentimes teams aren’t wholly formed—or can be torn apart—in the first couple weeks of play. The setup is weird, rag-tag, unregulated, and prone to double-dealing and wild shenanigans.
The tabloid press makes a killing off the season by fabricating backpage stories and clickbait headlines. Web traffic on soccer news sites actually increases during the offseason due to the insatiable appetite for transfer stories. As the sport has become commodified, and clubs have become brands, the regular season activity of actually playing soccer has been twinned to parallel, off-field activities of agents, executives, and the maneuvering of complicated debt schemes. Now, instead of simply wanting their club to win games, fans also want their club to dominate rivals economically. They (really I should say we) also simply like to daydream about shiny new players.
Spending big on players brings a sort of corporate sheen of prestige; it’s a win. If you’re a fan of a big club, a big purchase serves as reassurance that your club is still big. If you’re a fan of a smaller club, a big purchase suggests that one day your small club may well be big. And if you’re a fan of a small club, and you’re losing a star, the troves of poetic despair are endless and enjoyable in their own, self-harming way.
In other words, the transfer window is a soap opera.
For that matter, so are World Cups. One of the small pleasures of a World Cup is that it quiets the transfer market for a month: really, transfer stories are 99% tedium. Of course, the tournament is a showcase of many of the world’s best players, and every four years a few make names for themselves, are duly rewarded outrageous contracts by Real Madrid or Barcelona, and promptly crash and burn. A tournament is never a foolproof way to judge a player’s true potential, as the most any team will play is seven games, but in the end the romance of thing is too much for fans and clubs alike. The outstanding players will be bought. Vast cash will be blown.
So what’s going on this summer, you might ask? Well, the answer is plenty. The most astounding example, however, went down earlier this week. James Rodriguez to Real Madrid.
Lionel Messi won the Golden Ball for best player of the tournament, but he did so sheepishly, and immediately said that the award was next to meaningless. Many observers, and maybe Messi himself, felt that the award would have been more appropriately awarded to Colombia’s James Rodriguez, who won the Golden Boot for most goals scored (six in five games).
Rodriguez is a number 10, and just last year moved from Portugal’s Porto to Ligue One’s nouveau riche Monaco for 45 million euros. He had a good first season in Monaco, but apparently tax-free wages aren’t that great when you’re playing to the second smallest crowds in France. Or, at least, they’re not as good as playing for Real Madrid. Madrid has just bought Rodriguez for 80 million euros, which makes quite a one-year turnover for Monaco.
Rodriguez’s fee combined with last year’s world record-setting 100 million euro Gareth Bale deal, and Ronaldo’s in 2008 (the previous world record at 94 million euros), add up to more than the legendary Dutch club Ajax has spent in their entire 114 year history. Three players are outweighing a century.
Most neutral fans, I think, have a bipolar reaction to this sort of megabusiness. On the one hand, as a spectator, the thought of watching Bale, Rodriguez, and Ronaldo play together is exciting. It’s like De Niro and Pacino sharing the screen for the first time in Heat (with Ronaldo the third wheel, Val Kilmer). On the other, in fact the same hand, we’re being served straight-ahead blockbuster fare. It’s tiresome, celebrity, and in the end usually doesn’t make for the best viewing (superstars don’t like passing to each other). Where’s the genius in these blunt combinations of headline-makers? The success of billion dollar corporations becomes unremarkable at a certain point.
In the end, no matter how hard you might try to enjoy the sport in and of itself, it’s difficult to escape the disheartening reality that surrounds and supports it. Maybe that’s alright: the sport’s a powerful enough drug as is.
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