Will European soccer adopt an MLS-style trade system in a post-coronavirus world?

European soccer has long preferred a transfer market of sales and loans over trades, but could decreased spending post-pandemic lead to a more American system?

Anyone who has ever booted up Football Manager and chosen a Major League Soccer team to take charge of will know just how complex and convoluted the league’s transfer and trade rules can be. While MLS has largely aligned itself with the traditional European norms of the sport, it uses a distinctly American system to decide which players go where.

This has made MLS something of an anomaly for 25 years. Even to this day, there is confusion over the centralization of transfers, discovery rights, TAM, GAM, draft picks and Designated Player slots. At times it appears that MLS finds loopholes in its own rules, or simply makes up new ones, to lure players. The DP rule was, after all, invented to allow the LA Galaxy to sign David Beckham.

Now, though, European soccer is questioning the viability of its own transfer system. The coronavirus shutdown is expected to have a profound impact on this summer’s transfer window with many predicting a depression in the market. Manchester United executive vice chairman Ed Woodward, for instance, says speculation about transfers for “hundreds of millions of pounds” is ignoring the “realities that face the sport.”

It’s even been suggested that European soccer could abandon its wildly capitalistic transfer system in favor of something more American. “There will be lots of trades, a situation that will bring football closer to the NBA,” Juventus sporting director Fabio Paratici told reporters in a recent interview.

Of course, the NBA’s trade and draft system isn’t too different in essence to that of MLS even if there are some subtle differences. So is it possible that the United States and Canada, having been an uncomfortable anomaly for so long, could actually blaze a trail for the rest of the global game?

European fans would likely reject a system as complex as MLS’s. Soccer in the States and Canada gets tied up too frequently in red tape resulting in suspicion about the process of how players are sent to certain clubs. Look at how Didier Drogba ended up in Montreal despite his discovery rights being held by the Chicago Fire. MLS is fortunate to be without any real deep-rooted tribalism, but in Europe it would make such backroom moves ripe for conspiracy.

It’s possible that Paratici’s comments reflected a knee-jerk reaction from Europe’s top clubs impacted by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. These are teams that have been accustomed to getting their own way, to being at the top of the food chain. Now, the related economic slowdown has changed this.

Normality will return at some point, though, and when it does European soccer will most likely pick up where it left off, splurging hundreds of millions on players in a wild west of a transfer market. The adoption of an MLS-style transfer system would be the biggest change witnessed in the sport since the introduction of summer and mid-season transfer windows.

Nonetheless, there are still some processes that the European game could replicate from MLS. Some form of centralization, even if it is just in the holding of player and staff contracts, would protect clubs from any unforeseen drops in revenue. The Premier League already shows some solidarity with its clubs by making ‘parachute payments’ to those who suffer relegation from the division.

Trades are already possible in European soccer, although they are lodged as two separate transfers — see how Arsenal got Henrikh Mkhitaryan from Manchester United in exchange for Alexis Sanchez. It’s therefore not out of the question that an MLS-style trade system could keep the transfer market going this summer as clubs struggle for funds.

Soccer has never before found itself in a situation like this. Entire league seasons are on hold and clubs cannot be certain of their survival, with bankruptcies increasingly likely the longer the sport’s shutdown lasts. There will be a lasting impact and the transfer market, which has encapsulated soccer’s unchecked capitalism for decades, could feel that most of all.