The transfer window is when clubs can add players to their rosters. The word “window” is used in the media to describe a period during the season when FIFA – the ultimate football institution – and other national federations, such as the CBF, allow clubs to add new players to their squads in a way that does not disrupt the season’s official matches.
Brazil have two transfer windows: one for foreign signings between January 1st and April 16th, and another for domestic signings between June 22nd and July 21st. A Brazilian club cannot register a player who is already playing in another nation to compete in a competition held on Brazilian land outside of specified times. A fresh shift will occur in 2022, along with the end of the international contract period, with the formation of the national transfer window.
In early December, the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) wrote a letter to clubs and federations alerting them that a national transfer window would be implemented in 2022. The decision was made to comply with a FIFA directive that forces clubs to plan ahead of time in order to increase the regularity of national competitions.
The window for clubs competing in the Brasileirão Serie A and B will be combined with the international windows. This means that, regardless of whether the contractual player is based in Brazil or overseas, clubs will only be permitted to register new players in their teams within the hours mentioned below. Domestic signings in the country were allowed for almost the whole season prior to the establishment of this rule, from January 1st to September 24th.
The following are the transfer windows for any type of transfer in 2022:
The first quarter runs from January 19 to April 12.
The second quarter runs from July 18 to August 15.
Not only does the law apply to player arrivals, but it also applies to player departures. In 2023, the rule is expected to be implemented in the Brazilian Championship Series C and D.
The rule was meant to go into effect two years ago, but it was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. By the end of the year, CBF intends to incorporate all of these changes into the institution’s National Regulation of Registration and Transfers.
“International and domestic transfer periods will overlap under the same laws and exclusions.” FIFA has already made this provision in their rules. Improved squad management will be required. The window ends after the first round of the Brazilian Nationals (in 2022), according to Reynaldo Buzzoni, Director of Registration, Transfers, and Club Licensing at CBF, who told the GE that the club will have to play that team for three months until the next time opens in August.
Clubs will have to plan better
Several clubs choose to sign players when a competition is ready to start or when a more serious injury develops in the team. Starting next year, this will have to change due to the new requirements. For a team that does not know how to create a competitive roster in preparation, the inability to hire players for virtually the whole season without excellent planning might be disastrous.
“The preservation of a few short-term windows forces clubs to organize themselves, to think more carefully about squad formation, and it removes from directors a strategy that only serves to drown crises, namely, hiring at any time to say you’re thinking about the team, but in general it only serves to meet the demands of the fans and the press.” In an interview for the site Lei em Campo, Cesar Grafietti, economist and consultant at Ita BBA, forecasts that it will also help with financial control because the club will no longer spend on essentially unlimited information.
The history of transfer windows
In response to negotiations between European football institutions and the European Commission – an independent institution that represents and defends the interests of the European Union – which put pressure on the major football governing bodies to create a system of transfers between countries to promote the sport’s development while also providing legal security for athletes who moved from one country to another, FIFA made the window mandatory in the 2002-2003 season.
Before it became the norm, the concept had been adopted in a number of competitions in the World, including football in England. Since the early 1990s, the English have set deadlines for signing players in order to maintain squad stability and avoid repeated manager bids throughout the year.
