The transfer of power

The January window means inflated price-tags for players as teams get frantic to find the missing link.

Tottenham Hotspur’s Jermain Defoe has been linked with yet another January transfer window move, this time to Toronto FC. Scott Heppell / AP Photo
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Forget Christmas or New Year’s Eve. For football fans, the real festivities start on January 1, the first day of the winter transfer window.

Thirty days of anticipation, mostly unsubstantiated rumours and ultimately dashed dreams.

Deep down, the vast majority of fans know that it will all end in crushing disappointment.

Yet they allow themselves to believe; that Robert Lewandowski, Xabi Alonso or Wayne Rooney will somehow end up at their club.

It is not going to happen.

So little of the deluge of transfer speculation ever transpires that it is almost not worth following the news at all. But, of course, we do.

Sir Alex Ferguson’s mantra was that there is “no value” in January sales. He was right, most of the time at least, although it is worth pointing out he signed Nemanja Vidic and Patrice Evra in January.

But, for every Luis Suarez, there is an Andy Carroll.

Ferguson’s point was that the top players would invariably be cup-tied for the Uefa Champions League or Europa League knockout stages.

The January window is rarely about them. It is about wheeling, dealing and unearthing bargains. It is about unwanted players.

The further into January we get, the more the selling clubs hold the buyer to ransom. The result: massively inflated fees for massively overrated players.

This year, there is also the World Cup factor.

Nothing gets footballers itching for a move more than the thought they will not be on that plane to Brazil in June.

Erik Lamela, Juan Mata and Javier Hernandez are just a few who must be desperate for action before the summer. Still, these are players that will have no shortage of interested buyers.

What of those who do not command such attention?

In the middle of this Venn diagram of factors lies a footballer who has become a bit of a January transfer window fixture. A man seemingly always on the brink of a move, forever drifting in and out of favour at his club: Tottenham Hotspur’s Jermain Defoe.

Defoe has been transferred three times in his career, all of them in the January transfer window. From West Ham United to Tottenham in 2004; Tottenham to Portsmouth in 2008; and back to Tottenham in January 2009.

This year, it looks like he may be off to Major League Soccer’s Toronto FC, although that has not stopped a host of struggling English clubs from showing an interest.

Not surprising, as he ticks all the right boxes.

Out of favour, check. Needs playing time in World Cup year, check. Nearing the end of career, check.

Defoe is 31 and his next transfer is likely the last big one of his career. A move to cash-rich Queens Park Rangers would not really have been about helping the club earn promotion to the top flight. Neither would a return to West Ham be purely about Premier League survival; and Defoe to Toronto would be about more than just a new challenge.

Anyone who has watched Defoe play regularly will attest to a single-mindedness bordering on selfishness. His aversion to passing the ball is well known, preferring to have a crack at goal first and ask questions later. If you invite Defoe to shoot, he will RSVP promptly.

Now, there is another invitation difficult to turn down; but with respect to the Canadian club, it is a move he would not have even considered at the peak of his career.

That Defoe’s head was supposedly turned by a phone call from hip-hop star Drake, an ambassador for Toronto, perhaps indicates the decision to move is as much a lifestyle one as it is a footballing one.

A reported £90,000-a-week (Dh540,600) contract, paid accommodation for his family and, crucially, unlimited flights back home designed to help Defoe make England’s World Cup squad, would seem to trump a relegation battle with West Ham.

Managers know the deal with January sales, yet they are still willing to take a risk on a potential symbiotic relationship; player and club’s short-term interests aligning. The same goals that could guarantee a player that ticket to Brazil could also be the ones that ensure survival or promotion.

Then there is the most risky of January transfers, the loan move. Few things are guaranteed to get a player performing for himself, and not the team, than the knowledge he can walk away in six months.

Finally, there are the non-starters. Manchester City goalkeeper Joe Hart was another player rumoured to be seeking first-team football in January after losing his place to Costel Pantilimon. But there was little chance Manuel Pellegrini would let his current backup goalkeeper – and probably his long-term No 1 – leave.

Club managers could not care less about the World Cup. Make no mistake, Brendan Rodgers, Jose Mourinho and Arsene Wenger would gladly do away with the whole competition.

Then again, January is not really about the likes of Juan Mata, who will surely be gracing the midfield of another big club in no time.

It is about the bench warmers, the ones running out of options. It is about the unloved ones.

And, as always, it is about Jermain Defoe.

akhaled@thenational.ae