Borna Sosa’s deadline day move from Crystal Palace to FC Köln nearly collapsed at the last minute as he forgot his passport.
BILD report on the transfer today and how it was done with three minutes to go following a deadline day full of drama.
The newspaper states that pretty much everything that could go wrong did go wrong with the left-back’s last-minute transfer from Crystal Palace. In fact, the whole deal nearly collapsed.
Last minute deal
It wasn’t until 7:57pm – three minutes before the German transfer window closed – that the loan move was finally finalised. Up until that point, the newspaper says it has been a nerve-wracking day for the player and his new club.
The day actually begun with Borna Sosa at Crystal Palace, and training. In the background, the clubs were finalising the details of his move to Cologne. The 28-year-old had already agreed to the deal.
The matter was supposed to move quickly after his training session. He headed to the airport, and that’s when the drama began.
“He had forgotten his passport, so someone had to drive it over to him. That meant we had to move the medical examination to the Geißbockheim (the club’s headquarters), because otherwise we wouldn’t have had time to sign the paperwork,” revealed Cologne’s sports director Thomas Kessler during the talk show “E Levve lang – der Talk zum FC”.
Machine failure
That wasn’t the first issue as, once it came to uploading various documents to the DFL, the screen on the machine suddenly malfunctioned.
“We still had to print something out at 7:55 PM, and all of a sudden, the screen froze. That was the moment I thought: ‘Okay, this is going to be really tight,’” added Kessler.
In the meantime, the German side had to keep pressuring Crystal Palace. He believes they were unaware that the German window closed earlier than the English one.
“Even Premier League teams are sometimes surprised that the transfer window in Germany shuts at 8pm. They aren’t all that interested in what happens in the Bundesliga; they tend to focus on themselves,” admitted Kessler.
In the end, everything worked out and Sosa made the move. But not without a deadline day panic in which everyone contributed.
