Entertainment

Transfers and Tournaments

By: Rayane Saoud

Editor’s Note: Views expressed in this article are

solely the author's opinions and beliefs.

In the world of football, there are many things that make the sport as great as it is. Players can be sold or loaned to other teams who would like to buy them in order to strengthen their playstyle, players and clubs can participate in tournaments such as the Champions League, in order to prove which is the best team in Europe for that specific season.

TRANSFERS

There are two periods when clubs can buy and sell players in football. These are known as transfer windows. There is the winter transfer window, and there is the summer transfer window. In the winter transfer window, clubs will be able to purchase and sell as many players as they want within a specific time frame. Ex: January 1st to February 1st. The summer window tends to be longer than the winter transfer window, (approx. 12 weeks) due to the summer window occurring during the break between seasons. There are multiple ways to acquire players, such as purchasing them from their current club. The way two clubs agree to a transfer can vary. If a club is open to selling a player, any team can approach that specific player with a bid. When all three parties agree to a transfer, a contract is drafted. The player can then sign with their new club for up to five years. If a player leaves before their current contract has expired, the new club will have to pay a transfer fee to the old one, and the it will be paid directly to the previous club. The new club will pay the player's wages, hoping to make a profit off his name and image. 

LOANS

When players get loaned in football, this means that they are able to temporarily play for another club for a few months, or even the whole season. Sometimes, loan deals can persist for even more than one season. Players from a larger club can be loaned to another club in a lower division in order for them to gain experience to be able to play for their parent club’s first team (senior team). 

RECENT IMPACTFUL TRANSFERS

An example of a recent impactful transfer occurred in the summer of 2024. The transfer in question was when Kylian Mbappé (25), transferred to Real Madrid for free from Paris Saint-Germain. He originally played as a left-winger at Paris SG, but at Madrid he had to adapt to playing as a striker due to Vinicius playing on the left. He was originally labeled a ‘flop’ by critics who had high standards, but he eventually began to shine and ended up proving his haters wrong. In just 24 appearances for Real Madrid in Laliga, he has scored 17 goals and provided 3 assists. Another impactful transfer of the 24/25 season happened in the Premier League, with Manchester City signing Omar Marmoush from Eintracht Frankfurt for a whopping €75 million. Before transferring to Manchester City, Marmoush had accumulated 15 goals in 17 appearances, 1 goal behind Harry Kane’s 16 goals for Bayern Munich. After transferring to Manchester City, he managed to find the back of the net 3 times in 5 matches. 

UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE

Although the name says the word “league”, the UEFA Champions League is actually a tournament in which 32 teams will participate in in order to decide which team is the best in Europe. UEFA stands for Union of European Football Associations. This tournament is held intermittently throughout the year. It’s an international measuring stick for the best clubs in the world in order to see how good they can truly perform. Also, there is actually a sum of prize money that can be accumulated by advancing forth in the tournament, which is $27.8m. UEFA spends a purse of almost  €1B. In order to get in to the tournament, the top three leagues: Bundesliga (Germany), Laliga (Spain), and Premier League (England) all send the top four finishers from their respective tables, and then the fourth and fifth ranked leagues by UEFA’s metrics send three teams each, and so on down the line. Some smaller countries have to have their champions play in a series of three qualifying matches due to there being no automatic spot for them. Once the qualifying rounds finish in the summer, there are 32 teams left who participate in the group stage, where all the teams are split into 8 groups of four, where the teams will participate against the opponents in their group in two matches: Leg one at their home stadium, and leg two at the opponent’s home stadium. Then, the total amount of goals scored in both matches by each team will be combined to see which team truly won. This is called an aggregate score. (Ex: Real Madrid 3-2 Man City during Leg 1, and Real Madrid 3-1 Man City during Leg 2. The final aggregate score would be 6-3 Man City). The top two teams of each group advance to the Knockout Stages (multiple stages. Ex: Semi final, Quarter final, etc.), where there will be a random draw to decide which teams will play against each other. These matches are played in the winter and spring. These matches will have the same structure: 1 game at home, and 1 game away. If the aggregate score remains tied, whichever team scored more away goals will advance. If that score is tied as well, the teams will play an extra thirty minutes, split into two fifteen minute halves. If the score still remains tied, then both teams will participate in a penalty shootout. The losing teams will be eliminated from the competition. The final match will be played at a stadium determined years before the competition itself. Once the final match ends, the winning team will be crowned the best team in Europe that year. Bayside High School Freshman Brandon Ledesma says, “I think Barcelona will win the Champion’s League, since they have had a really amazing season so far. I do know that Liverpool is also having a great season, but Barcelona has lots of young talents playing for them. I also do think that Barcelona will play Liverpool in the Champion’s League Final due to how good both teams are.” 

 THE WORLD CUP

Hosted once every four years by different hosts, this prestigious tournament occurs to see which national team is the best team in the entire world. National teams will play against other national teams in a group system in order to qualify for the World Cup. Once in the World Cup, the teams will then have to participate in group stage matches in their respective groups. The top two teams of the group move on, and the others are eliminated from the tournament. Teams will then participate in the Round of 16, where 16 teams face each other, and whichever team that loses is therefore eliminated from the tournament. If the two teams are still tied after ninety minutes, then the game will go to 120 minutes (30 minutes of added time divided into two 15 minute halves). If the game still remains tied, the victor will be determined in a penalty shootout, in which five members from each team will step up to take a shot against the goalkeeper from the penalty range, which is approximately 12 yards away from the goal. This will continue for five shots. If the score remains tied, then the penalty shootout will continue until one team wins. The winning eight teams will then move on to the Quarter Finals, where each of the eight remaining teams will go against each other in order to win. Each of the eight teams will have to face each other in order to decide which four teams get to move on to the Semi-finals. In this round, there will be two sets of games. Ex: France V Morocco and Croatia V Argentina. Whichever teams win from those two games will move on to the Final Round, and the two losing teams will still have a chance to participate for third place. Whichever national team wins the final is the champion of the world. Bayside High School Freshman Samuel Bernal says, “I think Colombia will win the 2026 World Cup, since I’m from there and they have a pretty good team.”

THE PREMIER LEAGUE

The Premier League is the top tier of England's football pyramid, with 20 teams battling it out for the honour of being crowned English champions. Home to some of the most famous clubs, players, managers and stadiums in world football, the Premier League is the most-watched league on the planet, with it reaching 920 million homes in 189 countries. The league takes place between August and May and involves the teams playing each other home and away across the season, a total of 380 matches. Three points are awarded for a win, one point for a draw and none for a defeat, with the team with the most points at the end of the season winning the Premier League title. The teams who finish in the bottom three of the league table at the end of the campaign, are relegated to the EFL Championship, the second tier of English football. Those teams are replaced by three clubs promoted from the EFL Championship; the sides who finish in first and second place and the third via the end-of-season playoffs. At the end of every Championship campaign, the top two teams are promoted automatically. From there, the teams finishing between third and sixth in the league compete in a play-off competition to decide the final promoted team. If any clubs finish with the same number of points, their position in the Premier League table is determined by goal difference, then the number of goals scored, then the team who collected the most points in the head-to-head matches, then who scored most away goals in the head-to-head. Since the League began in 1992, there have been seven different winners: Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City, Blackburn Rovers, Leicester City and Liverpool. Man Utd have had the most success with 13 titles in the 31 seasons so far. Man City have the Premier League record for the biggest winning margin, when they finished 19 points ahead of second-placed Manchester United in 2017/18. The narrowest winning margin of +8 goal difference came in 2011/12 when Sergio Aguero's goal, deep into stoppage time on the final day of the season, gave Man City the title in the most dramatic of Premier League finishes. Arsene Wenger's Arsenal are the only side to have gone the entire Premier League campaign unbeaten. That record season was achieved in 2003/04, when they won the title by 11 points from Chelsea. Bayside High School Freshman Jeremy Correa says, “I think Liverpool will win the Premier League since they’re pretty tough, and they have a really good team.”

LALIGA

La Liga, much like England's Premier League, features 20 teams that play each other twice. This amounts to each team playing 38 matches, half of the matches at their own stadium and the other matches at each of the other team's stadiums. The points system goes as follows: A win amounts to three points, a draw amounts to one point, and a loss amounts to nothing. At the end of the season, which typically runs between August and May, the team with the most points is the champion. If two teams share the same number of points, they are sorted according to a head-to-head, or the results between the two teams when they face each other. If this is still a tie, then the team with the greater goal difference (goals scored minus goals conceded across all league matches) breaks the tie. 3 teams at the bottom of the LaLiga table are relegated to the second division (the second tier of Spanish football. The teams ranked 3rd through 6th play against each other in a mini-knockout tournament known as the La Liga play-offs, much like for promotion to the Premier League in England. The eventual winner of the play-offs will take the remaining place in the following season's La Liga. Bayside High School Freshman Juan Sevilla says, “I think Real Madrid will win LaLiga 2025 since they are a pretty good team.”