Hello, everyone. As some of you may be aware, I do a weekly top 5 list every Tuesday. In my preparation for next Tuesday's list "Free Transfer Deals That Changed History". In my research, I ran into a lot of names who have transferred for "free". However, I noticed something weird to these deals in general that I felt like sharing, a problem that I believe is trapping clubs in what seems like a great deal. Those great deals, or so they seem on the outside, have two glaring issues with them:
The Financial Issue
Whatever player coming without a transfer fee gets a higher salary than his salary is worth on the market. The reason for that is obvious, they save up on the transfer fee itself.
If Real Madrid for example decided to buy a player like Alexander Isak, they'd need to pay around 40 million according to his value on transfermarkt.com. According to many sites, his weekly salary is between 30K euros and 40K. So between commissions and other variables Maybe Real Madrid would pay up to 50 million for the player and maybe increase his salary up to 100-150K
Now, if they were to sign him for free the deal would be structured differently. Since the player would be saving up the transfer fee he would be asking for a much more lucrative deal and his agent would demand a higher commission. Aaron Ramsey for example got a deal worth 400K Euros weekly until Cristiano Ronaldo left, Aaron Ramsey was the second-highest salary earner at Juventus, now the highest.
So when saving Real Madrid the 40-50 million transfer fee, Isak's agent would demand a 10 million euros commission. Isak would ask for a salary that is up to 400-500K euros a week, with a high goal and appearances bonus along with other variables. In a mathematical sense, Real Madrid wouldn't be saving themselves 40 million, they'd be saving 10, maybe 20 million at best.
The issue here is what if the player doesn't perform well or doesn't get along with the team, I.E Aaron Ramey.
Juventus have been working hard to offload Ramsey, the only issue is, who'd pay 400K weekly for him? FC Barcelona themselves are paying the price for their high salaries as they are forced to keep players like Coutinho and Umtiti due to their high salaries in comparison to what their performance is worth.
The high salary leads us to our next issue
Lack of Motivation
Presenting those lucrative deals for a player knowing the numbers wouldn't get higher kills the motivation for a player to perform at the highest level of their abilities. Why would they seek to improve since there is no higher reward?
Another issue with paying so much is that some players would avoid signing a renewal to become free agents such action often results in current clubs not playing the players seeking to leave a lot. So often after they sign their pre-contracts, players would spend most of their time on the bench, often up to 6 months.
This results in these players lacking the fitness, we saw that in Rabiot, Arda Turan, and Barcelona's Moriba would have suffered from it had he not been sold. The lack of fitness could lead to the club signing the player spending a lot of time trying to regain match sharpness into those players, sometimes it would last a year. So basically the club might find itself spending all that high salary wages on a player who is essentially useless for a year and doesn't have a lot to fight for since he already got the big contract.
Lack of motivation isn't just the player's issue by the way.
Club's Lack of Motivation
As a person who watched Juventus closely when they started signing players free or low of transfer fee.
I feel a serious lack of motivation for those kinds of deals to work. After all, they got them at a discount price therefore they're not expected to perform at the same level as they should do if you paid that transfer fee.
In Juventus's case in specific you look at Rabiot, Emre Can, and of course the inspiration for this post, Aaron Ramsey, you'd find a lack of willingness from the club for the player to improve. The idea is that if they work, great. If they don't, we could just sell them.
I don't think that comes intentionally but it is just human nature. If you buy two pairs of shoes, one that costs 10$ and the other costs 400$, you will take care of the 400$ one more, and maybe not even care about the 10$ one.
Even crowds don't seem to care about deals that came without a transfer fee. And that plays a huge part in creating an obstacle for such deals to be successful.
In Conclusion
When I was doing my list for free transfer deals that changed history, I found the number of free transfer deals that were successful are very low in comparison to how many there are in the world. In my opinion, if not done right, players coming without costing a transfer fee might cost more in the long run than expensive deals that come with a transfer fee price tag.