Enjoy it: FIFA scraps emergency loans

Enjoy it. Enjoy the dates between Tuesday, February 9 and Thursday, March 24. Enjoy them as they will be the last time you can.

Well, of course that range of dates will still be there next year for you to enjoy but one vital component will be missing. The February/March transfer window will be missing, as will the September/November window.

Not much has appeared in print on this so it may come as a surprise to some, but there will be no more ’emergency loan windows’ for English football leagues outside the Premier League. What some fans of English Football League clubs relied on to bring in domestic players on loans between 28-93 days duration will be no more. From the start of the next transfer window, that’s all you will get – the two official transfer windows.

As from the commencement of the 2016/17 season, that’s all fans of Football League clubs will get – the two official transfer windows in which to do their business. With that being the case, then you can almost predict more frenzied ‘Deadline Days’; that means very little to Leeds fans like myself, we’d have to be awake to be frenzied. The thing is it means a lot to fans of other clubs.

The emergency loan system was often utilised by clubs in all three English football divisions below the Premier League in order to draft in promising youngsters from more established teams as a way for some clubs of bolstering their squads, thus lower league teams being able to survive with relatively smaller squad sizes.

Who’s to blame? Well, it’s FIFA who need to shoulder the blame on this one I’m afraid. It seems that England was the last outpost and bastion of ’emergency loan’, operating like a maverick on the fringes of the rules. However, FIFA say that they want to reel this in saying it is unfair to all other countries and it affects “the sporting integrity of the competitions.” There you have two ideas that you’d not associate with each other; the ideas of FIFA and “sporting integrity” being together.

Come next season we are stuck with the two permanent windows and that’s your lot unfortuantely. The November to January and February to March periods of the season will just be voids and transfer-free abysses.

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