🚨 Aston Villa agree deal sign Alejandro Garnacho from Chelsea. 22yo #CFC winger joins #AVFC on loan + conditional buy obligation. Medical done & Argentina int’l in Birmingham to complete. 4yr contract upon permanent switch - driven by Emery
@TheAthleticFC
How will UEFA look at this deal?
As detailed in the latest version of , signing players from Chelsea this window poses a quandary for Aston Villa. Any permanent signing would be deemed a ‘player exchange transaction’ by UEFA, and Villa’s sizeable profit on Morgan Rogers would be reduced in UEFA calculations to the net difference in fees paid for Rogers and, in this instance, Garnacho.
UEFA’s rule on deemed player exchanges covers a period of 45 days, and the Premier League transfer window has only 41 days left to run (as of Tuesday). Villa are in a settlement agreement with UEFA whereby they have little motivation to eat into that Rogers profit, so signing someone from Chelsea would do them no favours there.
One workaround is exactly the Garnacho deal now posited: a loan move that can conditionally – and conditional is the key word – turn permanent.
If Garnacho’s move were to turn permanent more than 45 days after the Rogers deal completes, Villa would retain the full profit on the latter; Chelsea, too, would bank whatever profit they make on Garnacho without the need for adjustment. They are in their own UEFA settlement agreement and badly need to generate large profits from player trading in 2026-27.
A conditional loan would therefore be beneficial for all parties, but UEFA is also wise to clubs finding loopholes. The governing body’s rulebook dictates that “if a condition is considered to be virtually certain”, the deal must be recognised as a permanent one at the point the loan begins. If, however, “the fulfilment of a condition cannot be assessed with sufficient certainty to trigger the permanent transfer from the inception of the loan”, then clubs can record a deal as a loan initially, then as a permanent transfer only once the relevant condition(s) is met.
Any such conditions are unknown at this stage, but it’s plainly in both Villa and Chelsea’s interests for any permanent transfer to take place later. If Garnacho does move to the Midlands, UEFA will cast a keen eye over matters. But the rules retain scope for manoeuvre, if clubs are savvy enough.
