Transfer window vs World Cup: all we are saying is give peace a chance

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The myth – and scholars largely agree it was a myth, almost from the start – appears to begin with Aristotle. Or, at least, he was subsequently dragged into it by later writers: maybe the likes of Plutarch and Pausanias, the ancient world’s equivalent to Michael Portillo, were actually just hoping both to borrow some of his authority and that nobody thought to ask follow-up questions.

Anyway: in both Greek and Roman literature, Aristotle is credited with claiming that inside the Temple of Hera at Olympia there was a bronze disc. It is inscribed, in a circular pattern, with the names of Iphitus, the king of the city-state of Elis, and that of Lycurgus, the great Spartan lawmaker. That bronze disc was the physical embodiment of the Olympic Truce.

At the risk of delivering a misjudged well, actually,  the Olympic Truce – the Greeks called it the ekecheiria – did not command that all of the competing states stop fighting elsewhere. Iphitus and Lycurgus did not design it as a sort of universal ceasefire, even if that is what we have taken it to mean.

Instead, their ambitions were more limited. The two leaders wanted to ensure that when they held the Olympic Games in 776BC, Elis could not be attacked while it was distracted; they also wanted to make sure that competitors arriving from all over the Greek world to compete would not be attacked.

The truce was enforced rigidly; at one point, Sparta was banned after a military adventure on the border of Elis; everyone’s favourite proto-fascists were also fined two minae – a couple of hundred drachmae, which in those days would have got you pretty good seats at the stadium in Olympia, even for a semi-final, for each soldier to have taken part in the raid.

We have reached roughly the same stage – albeit in a different context – with the World Cup. A truce is necessary. Not in terms of global problems; no matter how much Gianni Infantino tells you differently, it is vitally important that we all remember that football cannot actually solve them. It just feels that way for a few weeks every four summers.

Instead, it is time football instituted a truce on transfers for the duration of what remains not just its biggest tournament but by some distance its single most defining event. Maybe truce is the wrong word. Perhaps a moratorium. Perhaps just a full-on proscription, complete with some sort of swingeing penalty for transgression. More than two minae, certainly. 

This could take one of two forms. The simplest would be to say that players involved in the tournament should not be permitted to hold discussions with other teams while they are on duty. The stronger would be to follow the ancient Olympic model, except in this case it applies to Jorge Mendes and Fabrizio Romano, and say that in World Cup months, transfers simply do not happen.

This is not, I should stress, because I do not believe that Elliott Anderson is capable of signing off on a British-record move to Manchester City while also training for a couple of hours a day with England.

Some of these teams are going to be sequestered together for six or eight weeks. To be honest, any distraction is probably helpful. They are also not leading the discussions: Gonçalo Ramos has not been busy poring over the small print of his pension contributions at AC Milan; Victor Muñoz did not have to haggle with Liverpool for a more generous holiday allowance.

They have people for this stuff. They just have to sign on the dotted line. And, yes, OK, they must then leave camp to undertake a medical and – this being 2026 – pose for some photographs while pretending to roar like a tiger or shadow boxing a ghost or, for reasons known only to the gods of Olympus themselves, brushing some pretend dirt off their shoulder. 

All of that is, by definition, a distraction. And the optics of that are my first objection. Yan Diomande may not be affected in the slightest by having to choose between staying at RB Leipzig, moving to Liverpool or joining Paris St-Germain next season. But it looks like he is spending more time thinking about it than he probably should. 

My second is less practical. As enjoyable as the juxtaposition of the Premier League’s transfer culture and Fifa’s hydration breaks can be – we, the brave fans of the Deloitte Money League are once more outraged by the rank commercialism of Fifa – there is something jarring about the intrusion of club football on the great festival of the international game.

Part of that is a feeling that the clubs of the Premier League, in particular, do not need to consume all of the oxygen; they can, surely, take a month off. It’s really not that hard. But far more is the sense that these brisk doses of reality have the same emotional impact as receiving a flurry of Teams messages while lying on a beach in the middle of an idyllic holiday. 

It reminds us that the world we inhabit, just for this moment, cannot last; that sooner or later, the World Cup – with its fresh cast of characters and its original storylines and its enduring wonder – will be over and we will all have to think about whether Chelsea need a bit more experience or whether Arsenal are too reliant on set-pieces or whether any manager you care to name is, in fact, a fraud.

Once every four years, this tournament appears to break that cycle, to give us all a chance to connect to why we fell in love with football in the first place, to bathe blissfully in our nostalgia. The least that everyone else could do is allow the water to stay warm for as long as possible.

Photograph Eddie Keogh/The FA via Getty Images