Secrets of financial engineering in the players’ market.. How do clubs post transaction invoices?

Player deals are no longer just settled on the field, but have become a complex financial process that allows clubs to purchase players for huge sums without recording the full value in the expenses of the season itself. In 2025, global spending on international transfers exceeded $13 billion for the first time, according to FIFA figures.

When a club buys a player for $100 million on a five-year contract, not all of the $100 million is an immediate loss. The player is treated as an asset, and the cost of purchasing him is distributed over the years of the contract, at a rate of $20 million annually. This process is known as “depreciation”.

But the depreciation does not mean that the club paid only 20 million. He may agree with the selling club to pay the amount within two or three years, while the deal continues to appear in the accounts at an annual cost distributed over five years. Here lies the difference between when the money is actually paid and how the transaction is recorded. This is why clubs resorted to signing long contracts lasting seven or eight years, with the aim of reducing the apparent annual cost. However, the European Football Association set the amortization period at a maximum of five years, even if the player’s contract was longer, and the English Premier League adopted the same rule. Thus, buying a player for $100 million on an eight-year contract does not allow the amount to be distributed over eight seasons, but only over five.

Loans and mandatory purchases are among the tools used to postpone the transfer of costs from one season to another. But the new rules have also narrowed this space. If the purchase is mandatory or the fulfillment of its condition is almost certain, the transaction is treated as a final sale from its beginning. However, if the condition is not settled, it remains a loan until it is fulfilled.

On the other hand, clubs benefit greatly from selling academy players. A player who did not cost the club a fee to buy him has almost no book value, so most of his sale price is recorded as an immediate profit, and this profit can be used to cover the annual depreciation of other deals.

These methods do not erase the debt and do not make the player cheaper, but rather shift the burden to future seasons. With each new deal, depreciation payments, salaries, and agent commissions pile up. If the player declines, suffers an injury, or is sold for less than his book value, the deferred loss appears.

Clubs, then, do not just buy a player, but rather buy a financial commitment that extends for years. This engineering may help build a strong team, but it turns into a crisis when new deals become a permanent means of covering the bills of old deals.