Borna Barisic for £1M? Alfredo for £1M?

You’re probably reading this wondering what the heck I’m on about, and if I might be trolling. I assure you, no such thing.

2008. The Credit Crunch. It ruined banks world wide, it caused a colossal global recession, and it changed a lot about how we operate. However, the following year still saw Kaka and Ronaldo go to Real Madrid for a combined total of £150M.

At present we’re going through a crisis far worse than 2008. This situation is forcing a number of companies to halt operations or cease trading completely, and while optimistic projections suggest June or July before the world gets going again, the outcome goes one of two ways:

Either football simply continues on as it has. The transfer fees and wages stay the same, and the world pretty much learns nothing of its errors and just sees resumption of our mistakes.

Or:

And this one is more likely – we see a gigantic sea change in football, brought about by the collapse of so much industry over the next two or three months. And one of the consequences of this is the end of football transfer fees at the disgusting numbers they’re currently at, and the end of the ridiculous wages.

The world may be forced, by simple need, to be responsible again.

We’ve let football go out of control, and while this crisis is the worst way to change it, if there’s a silver lining for the beautiful game, it might be that it reverts to it again and takes away the vile spending power and elitism that gives men who can kick a ball straight anything above £500,000 a week in cash plus high-end clubs the ability to spend a casual £200M on them.

It has been said such development will be a necessity – that with the collapse of a number of critical sponsors in football (the sports betting industry is on its knees now) things will change, and simply have to.

And this is why instead of Rangers expecting £30M for Morelos or Celtic similar for Edouard or that £25M for Barisic, we may have the Great European Transfer Reset, because clubs in Europe, especially Italian ones, simply won’t be able to afford those kinds of numbers any more.

And frankly it’s not even that bad a thing.