If you're a sports fan, and especially one of a particular team sport, there's nothing like the boredom of an offseason with no games scheduled in that league on a given night. But there's solstice that comes either during the winter around the hotstove in baseball or the summer in the NFL, NBA and NHL. That would be the buzz and speculation of never-ending rumors and happenings in player movement: free agency, trades, re-signings, contract negotiations and beyond. No doubt, this brings a sense of relief to fans with something to talk about as they await training camp, preseason and the regular season.
If you follow the sport the world calls football that we here in America call soccer, this world of player comings and goings is known as the transfer market, and the prizes that go to those clubs lucky to receive them are "transfers." This topic of transactions in the world's most popular sport is as buzzed about to football fans worldwide as blockbuster trades are to sports fans here, and with good reason. Not a day or week goes by, most particularly during the offseason of the European leagues in the summer and later for one month during the winter, that talk of a player being transferred to another club becomes big story news.
International media keep their eye out all season for anything that can happen to top players going from a big league in one country to another, while social media has made these stories even bigger. And as much as trade deadline day and day 1 of free agency is a huge deal here, it's the same thing when you witness the final days of the transfer windows at summer's end and later in January: activity being abuzz between clubs before the period is closed and clubs must deal with who they have.
Yes, it's transfer madness in the world of association football, and just recently on September 1st saw the close of the latest transfer window that saw both last-minute deals and never ending speculation taking place around the soccer world. And if you thought that the hot stove leagues that dominate the baseball offseason, or the always interesting NBA summer of transactions is something, then wait until you see what it's like for those who follow the world game.
