Fans monitoring private jets, agents stoking the rumour mill and pointless hour-by-hour updates: a look inside the crazy world of the football transfer window

There was a bit of an oddity by 2024 standards earlier this month when Tottenham signed winger Wilson Odobert from Burnley. By Mail Sport’s rough calculations, the transfer was the only high-profile move this summer to come completely out of the blue.

In the age of social media, transfers are tracked weeks, months and, in the case of Kylian Mbappe to Real Madrid, even years in advance. There are often pointless updates on potential deals offered every hour – and Big Six clubs are loosely linked with dozens of players each summer.

This may seem like an odd sentence to write in the newspaper, but for today’s kids, logging into X or Instagram as the first thing they do when they wake up is the equivalent of reading your favorite sports pages over a cup of coffee and breakfast in the morning.

Outlets like this have been forced to adapt. In the case of Mail Sport, we had our fantastic live blog running 24/7 on Friday, packed with exclusive scoops and insights from the best team in sports journalism.

Even Sky Sports News has fallen behind somewhat. Just over a decade ago, this reporter remembers walking home from school to watch Jim White and his yellow-tie crew debating potential transfers until the clock ticked towards 11pm.

When Tottenham signed Wilson Odobert from Burnley, it was a transfer that came out of the blue

Man United’s eventual signing of Manuel Ugarte on Deadline Day was well documented

Riccardo Calafiori’s move from Bologna to Arsenal left fans searching for information for weeks

Some deals will only get fans to sign off if a player is photographed wearing their club’s shirt in the stadium. But these days, many get excited about the smallest of updates. ‘Player X is on a long list of targets for Club Y’ will send a fanbase into a frenzy and spark hours of debate.

Fans can count on a core group of journalists, who are usually ranked on social media according to a ‘ranking system’ of reliability, according to a coloured traffic light or ‘moon system’. Most of the Mail Sport journalists fall into the green or full moon category, but they will also swallow any old rumour.

Normally the process goes like this: if their club is linked with a player they want, fans will lap up the story and get excited about it, praising the journalist, whether it’s true or not. If it’s a negative report, like that a transfer is unlikely, then it must be wrong. It’s utterly bizarre.

There are also ‘superstar journalists’. Fabrizio Romano himself is a brand with 22 million followers on X. To put that into perspective, our Prime Minister Keir Starmer has 1.8 million and this week’s hot topic, Oasis’ Gallagher brothers – Liam and Noel – have 4.2 million between them.

Romano, who is only 31 years old and from Milan, has the slogan ‘here we go!’ which others have tried to copy, such as ‘there we land!’ and other imitations. If you look at a football agent’s profile on social media, you will see that in almost all cases they are followed by Romano.

He has his own cult following that hangs on his every word and can charge astronomical fees for short podcast appearances or adverts. He has a clothing line and some clubs have used him as part of their crazy transfer announcements, which is a growing trend.

Journalists get their faces in photos that fans send them on X. Some mean, some quite funny. No matter how good a team is, fans never seem to be happy in August unless their club signs a player, with a rumor being celebrated more than a goal on Saturday.

Children may be called boffins by their friends for spotting trains at the weekend, so they go plane spotting instead. The most followed flight on aviation website FlightRadar24 last week was the private jet from Barcelona to Manchester carrying City’s Treble-winning captain Ilkay Gundogan.

Last week Leeds fans got excited about a jet flying from Bournemouth to West Yorkshire. Who did they pick up from the Cherries? No one, it turned out. It was just an average punter who could afford the luxury of flying rather than relying on our broken train line.

Similarly, Liverpool fans were thrown into a frenzy on Thursday when a jet – which had travelled from Turin to bring Federico Chiesa to Merseyside – was en route to Porto. They are understood to have signed their midfielder Alan Varela, according to the ‘ITK’ (in the know) accounts on X.

Within minutes, Argentinian reporters jumped on the story. Sources close to Liverpool quickly denied any interest, and that was that. However, the X-aggregator accounts – which collect bits of news to repost, often out of context – quickly cashed in.

These accounts are paid by social media impressions – in short, X pays a portion of its ad revenue to verified accounts based on views, replies, and other interactions. Many reporters fear that the aggregators will distort their reports and are therefore forced to carefully word articles.

Readers may turn their noses up at this, but thousands of people around the world make a living from transfer rumours, often whipped up from trusted news websites. Imagine the conversation in a pub if you asked them what they do for a living.

Part of this crazy world is being run by the clubs themselves. Veteran superagent John Smith appeared on Mail Sport’s It’s All Kicking Off podcast this week – a very insightful conversation – discussing how teams and players now have a huge entourage of transfer gurus and agents.

Agents themselves often feed the rumor mill. They plant stories about journalists to increase their clients’ interest. For example, if Club A wants to sign a player but is dragging their heels over financials, an agent might leak a false message that Club B wants them to speed up a deal.

This happened this week with a high profile player, where an agent planted a story about a club’s interest in trying to negotiate better terms with their current club. Agents pocket huge sums of money from deals, most notably the huge amount Neymar’s representatives were paid for his move to Paris.

The most followed flight on aviation website FlightRadar24 last week was the private jet from Barcelona to Manchester carrying City’s Treble-winning captain Ilkay Gundogan

There are also ‘superstar journalists’. Fabrizio Romano is a brand with 22 million followers

Conor Gallagher’s move from Chelsea to Atletico Madrid was met with scrutiny from fans far and wide

Pedro Neto’s move from Wolves to Chelsea was another that went largely unnoticed

When super agent Mino Raiola died in 2022, it made back pages and top TV news. His successor Rafaela Pimenta now manages clients from Erling Haaland to Arne Slot, so it’s clear that these people are deeply rooted in the blood of football.

There are now hour-by-hour updates on transfer stories: the club is looking for a player, the club is interested in signing a player, a bid is being considered, a bid is made and another, terms are being discussed with the agent, terms are agreed, a flight is made to a new home country, a medical is completed, the deal is done.

In the two hours it took to write this article, Romano has posted 29 times on X – this is not a dig, he is often completely on the ball and the first to tell exclusive stories. The modern transfer window can be tiring at times, but no one can deny that it can be quite fun too.

Anyway, since the window slammed shut on Friday night – it always slammed shut, never quietly – it’s time for our transfer team at Mail Sport to put their feet up and take a day or two off. Just kidding folks, January is just around the corner… who’s going to sign my club?