There is a specific kind of transfer that only happens during a World Cup summer. The kind that gets announced on a Tuesday afternoon while the entire football watching world is focused on a quarter final, shared quietly on a club’s social media channels, picked up by a handful of people on Twitter, and completely overlooked by the ninety nine percent of fans who were too busy arguing about VAR decisions and Messi assists to notice that someone they had forgotten existed had just signed for a club they did not know was interested.
I missed most of these. I will be honest about that. I spent the last five weeks watching every game I could, writing about Spain’s defensive dominance and Messi’s last dance and the halftime show and everything else that came with the biggest World Cup in history. The transfer window was open the entire time. Hundreds of deals were being done. And I was paying almost no attention to any of them because the football was too good and the drama was too compelling and the window felt like background noise.
Now the tournament is over and I have had time to catch up, here are twelve moves that deserve your attention. Some of them are brilliant. Some of them are baffling. One of them involves a forty six year old coming out of retirement to play in Italy’s third division and I genuinely had to read the announcement three times before I believed it was real.
Ronaldinho to Ravenna
Let me start with this one because it is the most extraordinary transfer I have seen in years and possibly the most extraordinary transfer anyone has seen in years.
Ronaldinho, the man who made football look like an art form, the man whose feet did things that the rest of us cannot do with our hands, has come out of retirement to sign for Ravenna in Serie C. He is forty six years old. He was involved in the World Cup final’s halftime ceremony approximately twenty four hours before this article was written. He is now registered to play competitive football in Italy’s third division.
The deal includes a shareholding element, which suggests this is partly a business arrangement and partly the vanity project of a man who has never been able to fully walk away from the game that worshipped him. Whether he actually plays meaningful minutes or whether this is an elaborate branding exercise with shin pads remains to be seen.
But the image of Ronaldinho, at forty six, pulling on a Ravenna shirt and jogging onto a third division pitch somewhere in Emilia-Romagna is so perfectly, absurdly football that I cannot help but love it. The beautiful game at its most beautifully ridiculous.
Regan Heskey to FC Koln
This is the one that made me sit up properly. Regan Heskey, son of former Liverpool and England striker Emile, has signed for Bundesliga side FC Koln from Manchester City in a deal worth up to £8 million.
The eighteen year old spent eleven years at City after joining the academy at nine. Thirteen goals and sixteen assists in forty one youth team appearances last season tells you the numbers are there. The decision to move to Germany at that age rather than hanging around waiting for a pathway at City that may never have opened is exactly the kind of bold career decision that English youth players need to be making more often.
I wrote months ago about the Premier League’s failure to give young English players a genuine chance at the top clubs. Heskey leaving City for Koln is the practical response to that argument. Rather than being loaned to a Championship club and forgotten, he has gone to a competitive European league where he will get first team football and develop in an environment that treats young talent as something to invest in rather than something to store.
His dad will know exactly what a Bundesliga move can do for a young English player’s development. Emile may not have played abroad himself but the principle is the same one that took Kevin Keegan to Hamburg and Michael Owen to Real Madrid. Get out of your comfort zone. Play football somewhere that demands adaptation. Come back a better player.
Good luck to the lad. I will be watching his progress with genuine interest.
Ander Herrera to Real Zaragoza
This one nearly made me emotional and I am not remotely connected to any of the clubs involved.
Ander Herrera, thirty six, former Manchester United midfielder, has signed for his boyhood club Real Zaragoza. Zaragoza have just been relegated to Spain’s third tier. Herrera has signed anyway. The club described his return as an unequivocal sign of belonging at a crucial moment for the club’s future.
In an era where transfers are driven by wages, agents, sell-on clauses and commercial considerations, a player going home to his boyhood club at their lowest point because he loves them and wants to help is the kind of story that reminds you why football matters beyond the spreadsheets.
Herrera could have gone elsewhere. He could have found a comfortable deal at a mid-table club in a top division somewhere in Europe. He chose the third tier of Spanish football because the club that made him needed him. That is football in its purest form and I have nothing but respect for the decision.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to Deportivo La Coruna
Aubameyang is thirty seven years old and apparently has no intention of slowing down. The former Arsenal captain has joined Deportivo La Coruna, newly promoted to La Liga, from Marseille for approximately £1.27 million.
Fourteen goals and ten assists in all competitions for Marseille last season tells you the man can still play. The move to a newly promoted Spanish side feels like the right level for this stage of his career, a club that needs goals and experience and that will give him the kind of central role he thrives in.
I always liked Aubameyang as a player even during the messy end of his Arsenal career. The talent was never in question. Whether he can produce at La Liga level at thirty seven is a genuine question but given what he did in France last season I would not bet against him.
Harry Winks to Cagliari
There was a time when Harry Winks was starting for Tottenham and earning England caps. That time feels like it belongs to a different era of football even though it was not that long ago.
The thirty year old has left recently relegated Leicester City to join Cagliari in Serie A on a two year deal. It is a return to Italian football after his loan spell at Sampdoria during the 2022/23 season.
Winks is one of those players whose career trajectory says something uncomfortable about the gap between potential and fulfilment in English football. He was technically gifted, comfortable on the ball, capable of controlling possession in ways that coaches valued. But he never quite established himself at the level his early Tottenham performances suggested he could reach and the downward curve from Spurs to Sampdoria to Leicester to Cagliari tells its own story.
Italy might suit him. The pace is different. The tactical demands play to his strengths. Whether it revives his career or simply provides a comfortable final chapter remains to be seen.
Stefan de Vrij to Panathinaikos
After eight years and over two hundred appearances at Inter Milan, the Dutch centre back has signed for Greek side Panathinaikos on a free transfer at thirty four.
The move to Athens was unexpected given strong links to Benfica but there is something appealing about a player of de Vrij’s calibre choosing Panathinaikos. Greek football does not get nearly enough attention from the European football media and a player with de Vrij’s experience and quality will raise the profile of both the club and the league.
A one year deal suggests this is a short term arrangement rather than a long term commitment. But a Panathinaikos side with Stefan de Vrij at the back is a significantly more interesting proposition in European competition next season than they were without him.
Kelechi Iheanacho to Bursaspor
This one puzzled me when I first saw it and it still puzzles me now.
Iheanacho turned down a new contract at Celtic, where he had just won a domestic double, to join Bursaspor in the Turkish second tier. His statement suggested the move was not entirely his choice, saying his agent had done everything to make a return to Glasgow happen and that he was genuinely gutted it had not worked out.
Reading between the lines there is clearly more to this story than has been made public. A player who has just won a double at one of the biggest clubs in Scotland does not voluntarily choose the Turkish second division. Something happened behind the scenes that pushed this move in a direction Iheanacho himself did not want.
I hope it works out for him. He has always seemed like a decent person and a player whose effort and commitment deserve better than the uncertainty his career has been defined by since leaving Manchester City.
Jack Butland to Hull City
Newly promoted Hull City making their first summer signing a thirty three year old goalkeeper from Rangers is exactly the kind of sensible, experienced acquisition that clubs coming into the Premier League need to be making.
Butland has been around. Birmingham, Stoke, Crystal Palace, Manchester United, Rangers. He knows what the Premier League demands, he knows what surviving in it requires, and he provides Hull with a reliable presence between the posts that their young squad will benefit from.
It is not a glamorous signing. It will not generate headlines or sell shirts. But it is the kind of deal that keeps you in the division and that is worth more than any marquee name when the season starts and the stakes are real.
Sebastian Haller to Sanfrecce Hiroshima
Haller’s career has been one of the more remarkable journeys in recent football history. The former Ajax and Borussia Dortmund striker, who was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2022 and fought his way back to professional football, has signed for Japanese side Sanfrecce Hiroshima on an initial one year contract.
His statement on signing was characteristically humble. He spoke about getting to know the city, the club and the fans, about being respectful and doing his best. There was nothing performative about it. Just a thirty two year old man who has been through more than most footballers experience in an entire career expressing genuine gratitude for another opportunity to play.
The J-League is becoming an increasingly attractive destination for European players and Haller’s quality will be obvious at that level. More importantly, the fact that he is still playing professional football at all after what he went through deserves recognition every time his name appears in a team sheet.
Marco Palestra to Chelsea
Chelsea doing Chelsea things again. The twenty one year old Italian defender has arrived from Atalanta for £43 million after being named Serie A’s defender of the year following an impressive loan spell at Cagliari.
He was reportedly set to join childhood club Inter Milan before Chelsea moved at the last minute. That sentence could describe approximately forty percent of Chelsea’s transfer activity over the past three years. Identify a player another club wants. Move faster. Offer more. Sign them regardless of whether there is a clear pathway into the first team.
Palestra is genuinely talented and his Serie A performances suggest he has the ability to play at the highest level. Whether Chelsea is the right environment for a twenty one year old defender to develop given the sheer volume of players competing for positions at the club is a question that the transfer strategy never quite gets around to answering.
Pascal Struijk to Brighton
Brighton losing Jan Paul van Hecke to Tottenham and immediately replacing him with Pascal Struijk from Leeds for approximately £20 million is the kind of efficient, intelligent recruitment that has become Brighton’s signature under their current model.
Struijk made 196 appearances in eight years at Leeds. He knows English football, he knows the Championship and the Premier League, and he arrives at a club that has consistently turned undervalued defenders into top level performers.
For Leeds fans it is another departure that stings. Another player developed and lost to a club with more resources and more ambition. The cycle continues and the frustration is entirely understandable.
Jesse Derry to Sporting
Chelsea’s nineteen year old winger, who made his senior debut against Hull City in February, heads to Sporting CP on loan for the 2026/27 season.
The move makes sense on every level. Sporting have an excellent record of developing young talent, the Portuguese league provides a competitive environment that is a genuine step up from youth football, and Derry will get first team minutes at a club that treats young players as assets to be developed rather than obstacles to be managed.
His comment about Sporting being a club that wows fans and develops young players suggests he has done his research. If the loan goes well this could be one of those moves that looks quietly brilliant in retrospect.
What This Tells You About Football
Twelve transfers. A forty six year old coming out of retirement. An eighteen year old leaving one of the biggest clubs in the world for the Bundesliga. A player going home to his boyhood club in the third tier. A cancer survivor signing in Japan. Chelsea doing Chelsea things. And a former England international quietly moving to Sardinia while the rest of us were watching the World Cup.
Football never stops. Even when it looks like it has stopped. Even when the World Cup is consuming every ounce of attention the sport can generate. Somewhere in the background a deal is being done, a contract is being signed, a player is packing a bag and moving to a city he has never visited to start a chapter he has never imagined.
That is what makes this sport endlessly fascinating. The football on the pitch is the headline. The world around it is the story that never ends
