How a deadline-beating transfer really works and why any Leicester appeal over Adrien Silva looks destined to fail

Bernardo Palmeiro is a football lawyer who formerly worked on Fifa’s legal counsel dealing with issues arising from the Transfer Matching System and explains just what happens

Leicester missed the deadline to sign Adrien Silva by just 14 seconds (Getty)

New Leicester City signing Adrien Silva is almost certain to face a spell on the sidelines until January, according to a lawyer who has previous worked with Fifa on claims from the Transfer Matching System (TMS), as it is highly unlikely that the world governing body will bend on the situation.

The Premier League club attempted to push through the £22m signing of Silva from Sporting Lisbon as a replacement for Chelsea’s Danny Drinkwater, only for necessary documentation to arrive with the Football Association 14 seconds after Thursday's transfer window deadline.

Leicester are still trying to work out how they can appeal the situation and get the 28-year-old on the pitch, and internal discussions are ongoing at the club. If that appeal is not successful, they may try to see where they stand as regards who actually owns the player, them or Sporting - but that would depend on a clause having been stipulated that the deal only goes through if registration is completed.

Bernardo Palmeiro is a football lawyer who formerly worked on Fifa’s legal counsel dealing with issues arising from the Transfer Matching System, and explains it is unlikely that any Leicester appeals will be successful.

Any such signing involves the buying club going online to Fifa’s TMS, entering certain information and uploading four documents: the contract between player and new club; the legal documents terminating the contract with the selling club; the transfer agreement and the player’s passport or some other form of ID. Once this matches the input of the selling club, the buying’s club governing body - in this case the FA - requires the international transfer certificate [ITC] from Fifa.

That request is the key moment in terms of ratifying the signing, and needs to be done before the deadline for the window stipulated by the federation, in this case 11pm on Thursday 31 August. With Silva, that happened too late. The fact it is a mere 14 seconds is irrelevant, as accepting it would create a dangerous legal precedent. That has left the midfielder in limbo in a complex situation, and Palmeiro does not believe Leicester have much chance of overturning Fifa’s decision, according to the evidence out there.

“We don’t have all the information but if it is true that there was a delay in uploading the documentation due to a delay in finishing the negotiations, I would say ‘no’,” Palmeiro says. “The rule is objective and Fifa normally applies it quite straightforward without any exceptions.

“From my experience, there are really no exceptions and we need to understand exactly how the system works. So, there are two steps before the transfer is complete. The first step is, yes, the uploading of the documents by the two clubs, and there needs to be a match between the information provided in the system and the documentation, and [the second step is] then the request for the international transfer certificate by the federation of the club buying the player, in this case the FA. For the regulations, the moment that matters is not the moment when the documents are uploaded but the moment that the request [for the ITC] is done by the FA. So, according to the rules, the fact you uploaded the majority of the documents still within the deadline - but the final document was outside the deadline - it’s not necessarily a mitigating circumstance because it only allowed the federation to request the ITC after the deadline.”


 Unlike his Portugal teammate Silva is unlikely to be playing until 2018 (Getty)

Leicester could then argue that the player is still Sporting’s but Palmeiro explains this would likely be unsuccessful too - unless a key clause was included in the deal.

“In my eyes he’s a Leicester player," Palmeiro says. "According to the information, the deal is complete. The problem is with the registration of the player… in England, at the level of the FA. Normally, what happens in this kind of last-minute deal, the parties stipulate some kind of clause that if the registration does not go through, the deal does not go through. According to the information available, the deal between Leicester and Sporting does not contain any such clause. It’s just a normal transfer agreement and, if that’s true, I would say that Adrien Silva is a Leicester player without a doubt and now Leicester have a problem with the registration.”

If it is confirmed that Silva is a Leicester player, they could seek to send him on loan to a league where the window has not yet closed - like Turkey - but that would create another issue: he would have played for two clubs in Sporting and a Turkish side this season, so would not be able to appear for Leicester until 2018-19.


 Silva is likely to technically be a Leicester player - but he can't play 
 (Getty)

“That [a loan] would still require the validity of FIFA because at the moment, the International Transfer Certificate is still in Portugal and Portugal would have to send it to England so it could be sent afterwards to, let’s imagine Turkey, which is still open, and Fifa would need to validate it because the market in England is still closed, so it would not be possible for the two clubs to do it automatically. It would need to require Fifa’s intervention.

“They would have to receive the ITC and register the player to send him on loan. This would have to be something agreed by Fifa but because where the market where he’s going to be loaned to is still open, Fifa would eventually accept to agree the transfer in the system because the market where he’s going to is still open, but this would be a very exceptional situation that would require Fifa’s validation.

“This is a possibility with one problem. He will have played for two clubs in the same season and therefore not be able to come back to Leicester in January in play.”

As exceptional as the situation seems, however, Palmeiro explains that in his experience it is not that uncommon a situation.

“It’s not something that rare,” he says. “What happens a lot is the instructions are validated very close to the deadline, and sometimes the federations themselves say that they don’t have time to request the ITC in time. I believe something similar happened with Joao Moutinho and Tottenham [Hotspur in 2012], where they had the deal closed really at the last minute but they didn’t even request the system to proceed with the transfer because they realised they had no time. So I believe in many, many transfers this situation happens.”

It leaves Leicester with a complex process to go through - and some decisions to make.