FootyChatter.com

EPL Antoine Semenyo scored a stoppage-time winner in his final appearance for Bournemouth Catherine Ivill - AMA/Getty Images In a transfer window, things often happen slowly, then very quickly. To get a deal done, players must often move fast, gather their belongings, say a quick farewell, then head off for the medicals, contract finalising and other logistics before announcing their arrival elsewhere. So sometimes, exits can be swift and unsentimental. In other cases, after long, protracted efforts to force their way from one club to another, the manner of leaving a club is fraught. It can prompt rancour lasting long after the outgoing player has cleared their locker. Advertisement Others do it in a different, more endearing way, especially when the team they are waving goodbye to are close to their heart. With this year’s winter transfer window coming to a close next Monday, and after players such as Antoine Semenyo and Josh Sargent have shown examples of both scenarios already this month, The Athletic looks at how to leave a club, for better and worse. Flicking through the Bournemouth Echo on January 10, one page stood out among the usual local-news stories and adverts. It was a full colour image of Antonine Semenyo, Bournemouth’s departing forward, celebrating a goal on his knees, back to the camera, displaying his name and number on his red and black shirt. Accompanying it was the simple message, ‘To all the fans at AFC Bournemouth, thank you for all the memories. I wish you all the best, Antoine Semenyo. ” Antoine Semenyo took out full-page ad in today’s Bournemouth Echo to thank fans. Respect. ? pic. twitter. com/nao2X9Kk QE — Henry Winter (@henrywinter) January 10, 2026 It may not have completely soothed the disappointment of losing their best attacker to Manchester City in a £62. 5million ($85. 5m) deal, but it was a classy gesture that left fans impressed. “Players come and go and are quickly forgotten, ” wrote one Bournemouth supporter on X. “But a select few remain in the memory for a very long time. From Ted Mac Dougall to Ian Bishop to Nathan Ake, they all left with our thanks and were missed enormously. And now there’s Antoine Semenyo. A class act. ” Bournemouth’s official club website also released an emotional video with the 26-year-old in which the interviewer told him: “Ever since you stepped foot in the building three years ago, you’ve been so warm, friendly and such a positive influence on everyone around the club and everyone loves you… you’ve always conducted yourself impeccably and incredibly. ” A few weeks later, a less harmonious exit was brewing in a different part of the UK. Advertisement In Norwich, USMNT forward Josh Sargent, who had been voted Norwich City’s player of the season for 2024-25, was rowing with the club’s hierarchy over a transfer to MLS and had texted their head coach, telling him he would not play. That coach, Philippe Clement, had publicly insisted Sargent was not for sale, but the striker was desperate to move back to North America with Canada’s Toronto FC. Pedro Pinto is the founder and chief executive of Empower Sports, a communications agency which works with athletes, coaches, sports executives and clubs. He and his team help players and managers protect their reputations, and often take an active role when they are moving clubs. “How they handle leaving really sticks, ” Pinto says. “Many players have a direct channel of communication with fans and sometimes, for better or worse, they can influence what those supporters think. These guys are paid to play football, and that’s what they’re best at. But getting across their message in writing or words may not always come naturally. ” Pinto has helped many players craft their final message to supporters of the club they are about to leave. “We worked with Cedric Soares when he left Southampton for Arsenal in 2020, ” he says. “Cedric is a smart and thoughtful guy and wanted us to help ensure his message to the supporters was in tune with the time he spent there, and reflect the bond he had with the fans. ” 1/ Today, I am leaving @Southampton FC after four and a half unforgettable years. Through it all – my first appearance against Vitesse, my first assist against Newcastle, sixth in the league in 2016, League Cup runners-up in 2017, my first goal against Wigan in 2018–you have been pic. twitter. com/X1Xl SRJKWn — Cédric Soares (@Oficial Cedric) January 31, 2020 Empower has also advised veteran former Manchester United and Portugal midfielder Nani throughout a career that has included spells in the United States, Australia, Italy, Turkey and a return to his homeland in its peripatetic latter years. At 39, Nani just came out of 13 months in retirement and joined FC Aktobe of Kazakhstan. Advertisement “We don’t tell players what to do or say, but (we) allow them to express themselves in a positive way, ” Pinto says. “We might ask them: who helped you while you were there, who taught you the most? Who had a big impact on your career? It’s letting them tell their story in a farewell message. ” It is not just external messaging either. Pinto’s firm has even helped players craft a farewell message to team-mates in their shared Whats App group. It is vital, he says, to get it right. “This is something that stays with them in many ways, but certainly reputationally. It’s like an archive of your individual brand. ” Along with Semenyo, he also cites Eberechi Eze as having set the right tone when he left Crystal Palace for Arsenal last summer. Saying the right thing is key, but a generous gesture always helps ease a sad goodbye, too. When Sergio Aguero left Manchester City to join Barcelona in 2021, he did so in grandiose and philanthropic style. The City icon bought every member of staff at the club’s first-team building either a Hublot or a Tag Heuer watch, each one engraved with the words “Gracias! Kun Aguero”. At the time, The Athletic reported there were more than 60 people involved in first-team affairs at City. The Hublots retail for more than £8, 000, while the Tag Heuers cost at least £1, 000. The Tag Heuer Formula 1 model is priced between £1, 200 and £1, 650. One of the watches gifted by Aguero also gave each staff member a raffle ticket for the chance to win a grand prize: his recently-purchased Range Rover Evoque. The lucky winner was one of the team’s kit men, which apparently pleased the striker, since he greatly appreciated the department’s work. In May 2008, Aston Villa cult hero Olof Mellberg also opened his wallet to poignant effect. The Swedish defender decided that his parting gesture from Villa would be to provide each supporter attending his final game for the club — away at West Ham United — with an away shirt carrying the words: “Thanks 4 Your Support”. It led to the memorable sight of a section of the old Upton Park decorated with 3, 100 Aston Villa shirts, each containing a heartfelt message from Mellberg. Advertisement “Knowing he was calling time on his claret and blue career at the end of the 2007-08 season, he thought long and hard about his exit strategy before a move to Juventus, ” wrote The Athletic’s Gregg Evans last year. “A £40, 000 shopping spree on shirts at the club shop felt like the right fit. Villa fans labelled his final home game ‘Olof Mellberg Day’ and he was given a guard of honour by staff following a lap of appreciation. ” The gratitude is not always reciprocal, at least not from clubs. Defender Tony Hibbert spent 25 years at Everton from childhood, playing 340 times for them. But the end of his time at Goodison Park left him feeling dejected. As his career wound down in 2016, Hibbert was waiting to hear whether he would be offered a contract extension or get released by the club. In the end, Hibbert said he and fellow veteran Leon Osman found out they were not being retained via the club website, without any personal contact. “My wife rang to say she’d been getting text messages from friends that I wasn’t being retained. It was on the website, ” Hibbert told the Daily Mail that summer. “I couldn’t believe it, so I rang a friend at the club to check. They said, ‘Tony, I honestly don’t know why nobody has spoken to you’. I contacted Leon, and he was in exactly the same boat. “I won’t tell a lie, I was really hurt. Surely someone at the club should’ve realised it wasn’t right? I’d rather have been told at any point during the season that there wouldn’t be a contract, so I’d have a chance to plan my future and say a proper farewell. No player deserves that, whether they’ve been at a club for five minutes or 25 years. ” It was an unfortunate blip and out of character with Everton’s otherwise excellent record for treating former players with care and respect. That summer, however, the club had been in flux, with manager Roberto Martinez sacked before the final match of the 2015-16 season, a new majority shareholder in Farhad Moshiri feeling his way into ownership and a new manager, Ronald Koeman, only just through the door. Advertisement Everton have since reconciled with both players, and they were pulled back into the fold. Each was welcomed onto the pitch and applauded along with their former team-mates at Goodison Park’s own emotional farewell last May ahead of the move to the new Hill Dickinson Stadium. On other occasions, a parting can be soured by big, unyielding personalities. In summer 2017, Chelsea’s star striker Diego Costa and their manager Antonio Conte were not seeing eye to eye. Costa had texted Conte to ask if he would be in his plans for the coming season, only, he says, to be told bluntly he would not. The player responded by flying to his native Brazil, and was photographed riding with his pet dog on a jet ski while the rest of the Chelsea squad embarked on a pre-season tour of Asia. He was retained in their squad for the start of that 2017-18 season but the impasse continued, and Costa did not feature for the west Londoners again before he joined Atletico Madrid the following January. This week, Costa reiterated his sadness at the way his three-year stay at Chelsea ended and his anger at Conte. “In the end, I was in Brazil, I was with my family and I told Marina (Granovskaia, then a Chelsea director and deeply involved in the running of Chelsea) that for everything I’ve done for the club, I don’t deserve to be treated like this, ” he told former Chelsea midfielder Mikel John Obi’s The Obi One Podcast. “He (Conte) is a person who doesn’t trust others, he thinks he knows everything. You don’t enjoy training with him. He’s always angry, always with a long face… “It is a shame, because I was very happy in Chelsea, but I did not want to cause a problem to the club. The players wanted me to come back but nobody liked him. That’s why he didn’t last long (Conte left Chelsea after two seasons). ” Players can also be guilty of poor timing. Advertisement His instinct may have been impeccable in front of goal, but Jermain Defoe’s decision to ask to leave West Ham United in 2003 was a personal disaster. Defoe put in a transfer request shortly after the club had been relegated from the top flight. West Ham insisted that he stay and Defoe had to endure some frosty receptions when turning out for home games at Upton Park in the early stages of their 2003-04 Championship season, before a winter-window transfer to Tottenham Hotspur a few months later. “The manner in which I left West Ham, I would change. My agent at the time said I had to hand in a transfer request, ” Defoe told Sky Sports in 2018. “I trusted my agent and I thought this must be the process. ‘Hand in a transfer request and when you do that, you would be the first out the door’, that’s what he said to me. I looked at it and thought my agent must be right. He was saying all of those things to me, but even when he was saying these things to me, I felt very uncomfortable. ” Masking how you feel can play an important role in getting your exit right as well. “We’d always say to clients that the moment they are leaving a club is never the time to air any grievances or go into the negatives of why they’re moving on, ” says Pinto. “There will be a time to do that if they want to, but it’s not when they say goodbye. “It’s remembering that the way you are seen when you leave a club is also going to impact your image with future fans. ” He points to what he perceived from speaking to some Liverpool supporters over the summer as disquiet in how striker Alexander Isak forced through his move to Anfield from Newcastle United. “I got the sense that, for some, they were thinking, ‘If a player is prepared to do that to get a move here, then would he do it again to get a move (from Liverpool) to, for example, Real Madrid or Barcelona (in the future)? ’. Advertisement “The best way to go is to remember that you’ve been part of a community, not just a club, and sometimes it has been like family too. Being respectful is very important. “A lot of players are not advised properly at those times. They are listening to family or agents as opposed to communication professionals. They need to be able to look at the big picture. Sometimes we’ll talk them through how to express themselves in video messages for social media. ” Pinto worked with Portugal midfielder Joao Mario in 2021, when he joined Benfica from their cross-Lisbon rivals Sporting CP, the club where he’d started his senior career. “There is work done behind the scenes, ” explains Pinto. “A player is unlikely to phone journalists and add the context to their exit — let’s say if they were forced out — but we can do some of that for them. It’s important to have people behind you framing what is going on to ensure they are not being labelled a traitor. ” In the business of football, the bottom line can often force a parting, but there is also a compelling currency in leaving well. Just look at this video posted by Borussia Dortmund on Monday, showing Chelsea loanee Aaron Anselmino saying his goodbyes to his team-mates. He hugs every one of them and is clearly departing on good terms. An emotional farewell ? pic. twitter. com/ti YMA1b58Z — Borussia Dortmund (@BVB) January 26, 2026 “You need to keep it positive, respectful and grateful, ” says Pinto. “Don’t trash a house where you’ve lived before you leave. ” Greg O'Keeffe is a senior writer for The Athletic covering US soccer players in the UK & Europe.

Previously he spent a decade at the Liverpool Echo covering news and features before an eight-year stint as the paper's Everton correspondent; giving readers the inside track on Goodison Park, a remit he later reprised at The Athletic.

He has also worked as a news and sport journalist for the BBC and hosts a podcast in his spare time. Follow Greg on Twitter @Greg OK