The winter window is typically a time for rumor sites and Twitter nerds to run wild, with very few actual deals occurring. That'll probably stay largely true this season, but with a twist. Summer 2022 will see by far the biggest and best class of players leaving on free transfers in the modern history of football, and those players will be able to sign pre-contracts with new teams as of January 1st. What's particular interesting is that there are players in many different brackets. Predictably there are a lot of older players in their 30s, but you've also got massive stars (Mbappe, Pogba), prime age top level starters (Brozovic, Rudiger, Freuler, Sule, Christensen, Romagnoli), and even a few intriguing younger players who just ran down their deals (Kamara, Nketiah, Onana, Zakaria). I'm not sure how many will actually sign pre-contracts in the month of January - I suspect not too many - but it will add a different dimension to the window and to the team planning process of many clubs throughout the spring.
This isn't exactly how I would choose to line up, but you could win the Champions League with an XI fashioned from this group of players.
This isn't exactly how I would choose to line up, but you could win the Champions League with an XI fashioned from this group of players.