Everton and Liverpool will only be allowed to loan out six senior players a season after FIFA announced radical new transfer regulations.
Football's world governing body is looking to prevent clubs stockpiling players and loaning them out, with the new regulations set to come into force on July 1, 2022.
Introduced to help develop young players and promote competitive balance, the decision was passed by the FIFA Football Stakeholders Committee last year, and will now be submitted to the FIFA Council for approval at its next meeting.
FIFA’s new loan regulations had intended to be implemented in July 2020, only to be delayed as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Players aged 21 and younger and club-trained players will be exempt from these limitations, while there will be a transitional period as follows as FIFA gradually reduces the number of loan players a club can bring in or send out.
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As a result, the maximum of six players loaned out will be implemented by 2024 and Premier League clubs will have to fall into line on an international and domestic level.
- From 1 July 2022 to 30 June 2023, a club may have a maximum of eight professionals loaned out and eight loaned in at any given time during a season.
- From 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024, the same configuration applies but with a maximum of seven professionals.
- Finally, from 1 July 2024, the same configuration will apply but limited to a maximum of six professionals.
FIFA said to ensure that these objectives are achieved, the new regulatory framework will include:
The requirement of a written agreement defining the terms of the loan, in particular its duration and financial conditions
A minimum loan duration, being the interval between two registration periods, and a maximum loan duration, being one year
A prohibition on sub-loaning a professional player who is already on loan to a third club
A limitation on the number of loans per season between the same clubs: at any given time during a season, a club may only have a maximum of three professionals loaned out to a single club and a maximum of three professionals loaned in from a single club.
Everton and Liverpool both currently have five players aged 21 or over out on loan each.
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