This turned out to be quite an eventful summer for Monaco and USMNT striker Folarin Balogun. After the red card-that-wasn't at the World Cup, Balogun has now become the main character in a perfect transfer saga for this deeply unserious transfer window. The 25-year-old's move to Everton seemed secure late into the dying hours of the transfer window on Tuesday, but on Wednesday, Balogun remains a player for AS Monaco, and along the way completely bricked three different teams' plans for the upcoming season. The whole saga is puzzling, rather funny, and a perfect example of why soccer gets just one thing right about its player movement system.
OK, so what happened? Let's start with Everton. The Toffees were looking relatively settled as the transfer deadline approached, but the sudden departures of star winger Iliman Ndiaye and striker Beto meant they needed to bring in some attacking reinforcements. Balogun was a good target here; he's young, talented, and played exceedingly well at the World Cup, red card saga be damned. That's a great recipe for a move, and so Everton reached a deal with Monaco for around €47 million. So far, so good. But the problems started with Balogun's medical.
Normally, medicals are a formality; most injuries are widely documented, and teams know roughly what they are in for when they agree to purchase a player. However, Everton's medical team flagged some issues with Balogun's fitness, which seemingly scuttled the move. Everton swiftly pivoted to try to loan Manchester United's Joshua Zirkzee, whose 2024 move to Old Trafford didn't really amount to anything last season. United, however, did not want to let Zirkzee go, which left Everton in a tricky situation with only hours to go in the window. The Toffees then decided to go back to Monaco and try to arrange a new deal for Balogun.
Here's where things get weird. After discussing with Monaco's medical staff, Everton decided an hour later that, actually, Balogun's fitness was not a problem, and the clubs agreed on a deal after all. However, thanks to the back-and-forth, Balogun decided at the last minute to not accept a move to the Premier League, with Monaco sporting director Thiago Scuro summarizing the American's position as, "I'm not feeling comfortable with the way the club treated me. I'm not comfortable with the doubts raised about my future or my health. I have no issue, so I'm not comfortable signing a contract here."
Taking the whole saga at face value, Everton can't be blamed for doing its due diligence on a player, and if it did find an issue, it is understandable to not move ahead with the deal, or to try to negotiate a cheaper fee. However, the flip-flop is strange, and if Balogun is in fact fine and healthy, then Everton's medical team is either incompetent or, if I can throw my conspiracy hat on, nefarious, flagging an issue just to help the Everton brain trust get a better deal on a young striker, particularly once the Zirkzee loan deal fell through. Whatever the real reason is, though, the reality is that Balogun was reportedly ready to join Everton before the medical, and wanted no part of the move after.
The cascading effects from Balogun's decision to return to Monaco are a sight to behold. First off, Everton is left with one nominal striker on its first team roster (Thierno Barry) and a whole bunch of question marks behind him until the January transfer window opens. It's probable that 18-year-old Braiden Graham—who is 5-foot-9 and about 148 lbs.—will get a call-up and some minutes whenever Barry needs a rest. Balogun would have fit perfectly in this roster, in other words, so this is a big blow to a side that many (geniuses, like me) think could push into Europe spots this season.
Monaco is also in a complicated position following Balogun's reversal, and their troubles have also fucked things up for Chelsea. See, Chelsea sold Enzo Fernández to Manchester City earlier on Tuesday for a Premier League joint-record €146 million, and so the Blues (of London this time) needed a replacement. Despite spending roughly a bajillion dollars this summer, Fernández's departure left Chelsea a bit shallow in midfield, and so the club made a move for 22-year-old Lamine Camara, from Monaco. Since Monaco needed to sell someone off of its books—Premier League money is in a different stratosphere to everywhere else, which is how Chelsea can afford to spend €407 million in a summer while Monaco needed to sell someone just to get an influx of cash—that deal moved ahead.
However, once Monaco agreed to a deal with Everton for Balogun, it decided to pull out of negotiations with Chelsea for Camara, assuming that the Balogun fee would be enough of a windfall to not sell one of its most promising players. This left Chelsea in a rut, with no time to replace Fernández. One could argue that Chelsea should have finalized that move, which had been reported for at least a week, sooner in order to have time for a backup plan, but that's a story for another day. And yet, once Balogun rejected the move to Everton, Monaco also got caught out; instead of selling one of two players for Premier League money, now Monaco has both on its books and no money coming in. Oops!
All three of the clubs involved in this mess can take some blame. Chelsea and Everton should both have moved faster to sell their players (Fernández and Beto, respectively), so as to not be screwed over if anything went wrong with the Monaco players they each coveted. Everton specifically also needs to figure out what happened with the medical; according to Scuro, the switch from "Balogun has fitness concerns" to "never mind" took just about an hour, which feels like an issue of process and/or something much sketchier. Monaco could have also chosen to sell Camara and Balogun, which would have at least given it the cash from the former when the latter changed his mind. Leaving deals to the last moment in the window is always a risk, and three teams were left in a heap due to those risks not paying off.
The one person who is not to blame here is Balogun himself, though. And this is where the magic of soccer's transfer system comes into play. Unlike, say, American sports, which allow teams to trade almost any player to any team, soccer gives the players power. As part of transfers, players have to agree to new contracts with their presumptive new teams. In a sport that is quickly becoming more and more top-heavy and club-oriented, this bit of player power serves as a necessary counterweight that stops clubs from treating this whole sport like a private equity asset.
The system isn't always perfect, but the agency it gives to players in determining their own career paths makes it a far better method for "trading" players than anything American sports have to offer. And so, if Balogun did feel like Everton's medical team raised issues that aren't there for financial gain, or just disrespected his time, he is within his rights and power to reject a move there, as he did. It's not his problem, nor should it be, that Everton is now paper-thin at striker, or that Chelsea is left without a midfielder replacement, or that Monaco was surely counting on a transfer fee of some sort on Tuesday. In theory and in practice, the power that Balogun wielded for no reason other than because he felt "uncomfortable" with how he was treated by Everton should force clubs to act in good faith. If the medical was flagged just to get a discount, that should have potentially season-ruining ramifications for Everton, and it's only unfortunate for Chelsea and Monaco that they were caught in the crossfire. (I do not feel bad for them, for reasons stated above; this could have been prevented.)
Regardless of what truly happened here, it's a fitting end to this transfer window that saw Premier League clubs spend billions on bizarre moves, mainly coming from other English clubs. Blame the World Cup for compressing the summer into just a month and a half, or blame the Premier League's apparent fixation on mostly buying players from within its own structure, but I can't remember more botched transfer sagas, more rejects purchased for inflated fees, and more confusion over what everyone is doing. (Tottenham, I have questions for another day.) By simply asserting his own agency, Balogun laid waste to three teams and put himself first, which might just make his saga the most understandable one of the Premier League summer.
