FIFA’s transfer window is bad for Scottish football

The transfer window rules are stifling Scottish football and hurting teams on the breadline.

The much-maligned transfer window is now officially closed until June 9.

No wonder it’s disliked as much in Scotland as it is over-hyped on SKY Television. This FIFA regulation does little or nothing to help the poverty-stricken game in Scotland.

More and more people are convinced Scottish clubs would be better off under the previous system where players could be bought and sold anytime until the last six weeks of the season. That helped balance the books off the park, and improve fortunes on it.

When Celtic completed the most successful season in their history 47 years ago, being able to buy Willie Wallace from Hearts in December, 1966 played a big part in winning the European Cup on top of the domestic Treble.

They’d already lifted the League Cup by time they paid £30,000 for ‘Wispy’. Although well placed in all competitions that season, manager Jock Stein feared the worst when he lost leading scorer Joe McBride to a serious knee injury for the rest of the season. McBride had scored 18 goals in just 14 games when tragedy struck.

Yet Stein was in the fortunate position of being able to sign Wallace immediately instead of having to wait for a transfer window to open. Wallace repaid Celtic immediately by scoring 14 times in 21 games.

With so many teams living from day to day, being able to sell a player until the end of March was often a saviour in the past.

Now clubs must manage their cash flow to see them through to the end of the season without the possibility of a transfer top-up to stave off creditors.

Pre-transfer window legislation, it was common for clubs to phone round even immediate rivals, offering to sell a prized asset just to keep them trading until the end of a season.

Now you can’t even sign a Junior player to tide you over, as Dundee famously once did. When the flamboyant Simon Stainrod was in charge at Dens Park, he signed Garry Paterson from Lochore Welfare for the princely sum of £1,000 and a set of tracksuit tops!

Paterson was later sold to Ayr United for £25,000, with Lochore earning themselves another £1,875.

FIFA is stifling that type of deal with their transfer window enforcement. In trying to create a level playing field, they are threatening the very existence of clubs in Scotland.