Has the transfer window been boarded up?

By David Torrance

Deadline day is an exciting time (Image: Getty Images

Deadline day is one of the most anticipated days of the football calendar with fans around the globe staying up all night with their eyes glued onto Sky Sports as the clock ticks closer to midnight.

The fear was whether your club would get that final signing in the door just in time before the window shut or if the fax machine would be your demise.

However, in the last few years, the joy and excitement of the transfer window seems to have stopped, with very few people being ready and waiting for those final players to sign for their new clubs.

Whenever you turn on Sky, instead of a reporter at every ground, surrounded by the public eagerly waiting for the breaking news of a signing, you are met with dull faces telling you about a signing that you already knew was happening through journalists on social media.

So, is that the problem?

Has having the information at your fingertips, all the knowledge and in-the-know you can possibly imagine ruined the joy that deadline day used to bring to football fans?

Journalists like Fabrizio Romano, one of the most well-known sports reporters, seems to have contact with everyone on earth, reporting on teams like Barcelona all the way to St Mirren. He seems to be the go-to for any information regarding transfers nowadays.

It is not just him. Others like David Ornstein use Twitter, or “X”, to give all the information they have, providing fans with everything they need down to a player’s wage or how far along in their medical they are.

These journalists do not do anything wrong. They provide fans with the information that Sky or BBC will give out, but they have this news in the palm of our hands hours before any other news source gets a hold of it.

But that’s the problem. With information about the whole deal being available sometimes weeks before a transfer is completed, it ruins the surprise.

A transfer appearing out of thin air was always the best part about Deadline Day, cutting to a reporter who had news, but no one around him had a single clue as to what it was. That is what people miss.

When Geraint Hughes announced that Mesut Özil was signing for Arsenal in 2013, absolute pandemonium broke out behind him. However, when Cristiano Ronaldo made his shock return to Old Trafford in 2021, it was announced in studio, with no real fanfare surrounding it.

Is this because online reporters were quick to have the information out well before the signing happened, ruining the surprise? 

Football has few things left that are sacred to the fans.

At first it was a goal, the rush of your team scoring a last-minute winner, that had to be subdued until five minutes worth of VAR checks are over before it’s given. And now fans can’t even have a shock-filled transfer Deadline Day without Twitter journalists spilling every single rumour they have in to the open.

Deadline day may never be the same, whether it's a nostalgic feeling a lot of older fans have lost, or if it has genuinely come to an end, memories of staying up late waiting for a signing will last.








SportDavid Torrance