Player transfer values will drop 28 percent, CIES report says

Arguably the biggest impact of the coronavirus ripping through Europe and forcing leagues to suspend play is the economic impact it will have on clubs both big and small. We don’t know what the schedule will be like when play resumes and when it will resume, but we do know that clubs are going to take a major hit financially because of no games being played on multiple fronts and no revenue being generated.

It goes beyond this season, too.

And it will certainly change how teams might do business whenever the next transfer window takes place.

A report from the International Centre For Sports Studies released on Monday only confirmed that notion, stating that players’ potential transfer values will take a major, major hit the next time clubs are free to acquire new talent. How much? Well, according to the CIES report, player transfer values will take a 28 percent hit, which obviously will make the transfer market look a little different than it might have been if this summer was pretty much business as usual as we might have thought it would be a couple of months ago. In total, that will equate to a drop from €32.7 billion to €23.4 billion.

Let me repeat that: TWENTY-EIGHT PERCENT.

That’s ... a lot.

In typical Tuttosport fashion, the Italian daily quickly made this related to Juventus’ summer transfer market. And when you put potential Juve transfer activity out there, Tuttosport will pounce and go back to their usual suspects of transfer targets the Italian champions might sign.

That, of course, centers around a potential pursuit of Manchester United midfielder Paul Pogba.

Tuttosport notes that with the 28 percent drop in value that is expected to happen during the next transfer window, Pogba’s potential price to bring him back to Turin would go from €65 million to — wait for it — €35 million. That’s quite the significant drop, and obviously one that Tuttosport is throwing out there to suggest that Pogba will be even more of a potential addition than he would have been if there was no significant hit to his market value.

Tuttosport also adds this little nugget: The estimated value of Juventus’ squad will drop from €783 million to €561 million, a decrease of 28 percent. (Other Serie A clubs, like Inter or Lazio, could be hit even harder than the 28 percent drop Juve might experience.)

How much the coronavirus pandemic hurts Juventus’ transfer dealings remains to be seen. Remember, it’s just not potential signings that will probably come at a smaller price than we thought they might have a few months ago, it’s potential departures, too. How much could this hurt Juventus getting good value for somebody like, say, Miralem Pjanic or somebody like that? Could selling one player for a below-market price impact the pursuit of another one? It’s interesting times — and they’re going to get even more interesting as we go on.