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A breakdown of individual transfer fees remains largely hidden. However, there must be a line drawn between disclosing transfer fees and disclosing wages. Wages are between a club and an individual and publicising that would divide a dressing room. No matter how astronomical, they should be under no more pressure to disclose their salary than you or I.
It may never have been more business-like, but football is a sport played, watched, and — with the advent of financial fair play, supposedly decreasing the influence of billionaire owners — paid for by the fans, whether it's done through Sky-shaped mediums, ticket-price hikes, or other means. It is becoming a numbers game, increasingly crunched by Opta on the pitch, and by boardrooms off it. Fans have a lot invested in these players, be it emotionally or numerically — do they not deserve to know the figures their clubs are buying or selling these players for, or know if their chief executive is having their pants pulled down in the transfer market?
Privately-owned clubs will argue that they are under no obligation to share the ins and outs of the transfer window's ins and outs.
But obligation is a subjective term — should a club serve its fans because it wants to or because it has to? For clubs wholly or partly owned by their fans, such as Barcelona and Real Madrid, or indeed nearly all German or Turkish clubs, fans should have access to their club's transfer fees, but are mostly denied this.
Is this enough? Ironically then, paying more for a player can make him less likely to be a success. But then again, maybe Phil Gartside should of thought of this before he sanctioned an extravagant bid—and foolishly tried to keep the press in the dark. But if the buying club doesn't want the fee revealed, the selling club won't disagree—for fear of jeopardizing the deal.
In this age of player power, it is not always the club with the contract that gets the best deal. Take, for instance, the recent transfer of Younes Kaboul from Tottenham to Portsmouth. With the fee undisclosed, it is highly likely that Spurs received far less for the Frenchman than they paid for him just a year ago. The irony of course, is that the media will inevitably reveal the details in the end. No one involved can keep quiet forever—and the very fact clubs try so hard to keep things secret only heightens the media reaction.
More often than not, honesty would be a far better policy. Often, the fee is revealed because both sides are happy they have agreed a market price for the player in question. This is the case 90 percent of the time—but not always.
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