On August 24th, Joe Hart played his last match for Manchester City. It wasn’t a low key affair, but in the Champions League against Steaua Bucharest.
The Manchester City fans said their goodbyes, Hart got emotional, and before long the England goalkeeper was in Turin learning Italian and making friends.
Torino have Hart on a season long loan, Manchester City have no recall option, so even if Pep Guardiola did the unexpected and turned his back on Claudio Bravo, there’d be no way of automatically bringing Hart back.
At the same time, if Hart was to leave Torino during the current window then he could only sign for Manchester City, he wouldn’t be allowed to play for a third club in the same season.
FIFA’s ‘Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players’ details the regulations and rules of footballers moving between clubs.
Note 5.3 states: ‘Players may be registered with a maximum of three clubs during one season. During this period, the player is only eligible to play official matches for two clubs. As an exception to this rule, a player moving between two clubs belonging to associations with overlapping seasons (i.e. start of the season in summer/autumn as opposed to winter/spring) may be eligible to play in official matches for a third club during the relevant season, provided he has fully complied with his contractual obligations towards his previous clubs. Equally, the provisions relating to the registration periods (article 6) as well as to the minimum length of a contract (article 18 paragraph 2) must be respected.’
Given that Hart played an official match for Manchester City and has played many for Torino, that’s the goalkeeper’s two clubs taken up.
And still, there are claims and rumours about where Hart could move in January. At the time of writing, both Paddy Power and Betfair are accepting bets on which club Hart could move to during the January window, despite the FIFA rule.
It’s a rule which is enforced, as Hatem Ben Arfa found out when he left Newcastle United and then spent the second half of a season not being able to play for Nice.
Unless Manchester City owned Hart is going to join a club and sit in the stands for the rest of the season, which he obviously isn’t, and Torino clearly wouldn’t agree to, then this is all a very strange situation.
Don’t place your bets.
