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Remember the days when transfer announcements used to appear in the front pages of national newspapers and the excitement would drive fans insane for quite a while? Well, the days of newly bought players being revealed normally at their home stadiums, with the announcement being accompanied by a few flyers and a bland presser are gone.
Today, social media plays an important role in keeping fans and clubs engaged, and the latter tries to do everything they can to increase their account's engagement on websites.
Nowadays, the announcement of the transfer is a well thought out affair, which includes low-budget whacky videos or a meme style of presentation which fans love to see. These creative announcements not only engage the supporting fans, but it also creates a name for the account across social media platforms, which leads to more and more people following the account, and in turn, the club.
This decade has been one wherein clubs across the world have used social media to better interact with their fans. As the 2010s draw to a close, we take a look at the best transfer announcements which clubs have made in recent years.
#5 Transfer Tinder - Yeovil Town, 2017
Who said lower division teams cannot join in on the fun? The Yeovil Town Twitter account is one of the most active ones on the social media website, and the team which manages the account sure know what they are doing. In 2017, Yeovil Town FC came up with a very unique transfer announcement video for Oscar Gobern, their latest signing.
The club made use of the dating app Tinder's interface to announce their latest acquisition. Their video consisted of the club swiping through their 'options', which included Lionel Messi and Neymar. The video was very hilarious, and it remains one of the most creative transfer announcements of the past few years.
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#4 Pokemon Go makes it to the world of football - Vancouver Whitecaps, 2016
Remember Pokemon Go? The mobile phone gaming application which took the world by storm was one of the biggest phenomenons of the decade. The world of Pokemon is one adored by millions across the globe, and in 2016, Pokemon Go was quite simply one of the most widespread cultural trends out there.
The game involved users going out of their houses and venturing into the real world to catch some Pokemon characters. In the same year as its initial release, Major League Soccer team Vancouver Whitecaps decided to make use of this latest fad to announce their latest transfer.
In what is one of the earliest instances of a team making use of social media to post a bizarre transfer announcement, the MLS club 'captured' player Marcel De Jong within the game and acquired his services for the team.
Have a look at the video - it is so simple yet hilarious that you cannot stop and admire the creativity behind it.
#3 Aleksandar Kolarov is not impressed - AS Roma, 2017
Serie A club AS Roma are one of the kings of the Twitter world. With one of the most interactive accounts which often engages in banter with fans from across the globe, the AS Roma Twitter account is a goldmine for memes and hilarious football content.
Having a few of the best transfer announcements of the past few years, the one that takes the cake is this one to announce former Manchester City player Aleksandar Kolarov.
The video starts with the player sitting in a room, and presumably one of Roma's marketing team personnel tries to explain to the defender how his announcement will be done through a video which has a plot so complex, not even Christopher Nolan would be able to understand it.
This video is hilarious due to the over the top plot being explained, which in turn is a caricature of how seriously clubs take their announcements nowadays. Kolarov's unimpressed face is a source for genuine laughter, as the video ends with him just saying no to everything and walking out of the room.
#2 Southampton break the fourth wall - 2017
One of the most retweeted and liked tweets in the footballing world over the past few years, Premier League club Southampton's announcement of Stuart Taylor's one-year contract extension is comedy gold.
The Saints took a more satirical approach to the entire social media strategy as they decided to break the fourth wall and mock all the other clubs for their over the top videos which often ended up badly. Keep in mind that this was not even the announcement of a new transfer, rather an extension which garnered over 25,000 retweets at the time of writing.
The video runs like the trailer of a Hollywood movie, with fake quotes from certain newspapers and made-up sarcastic comments and ratings from people to drive home the point that this entire process of transfer announcements has possibly reached its pinnacle. Have a look at the video, and judge for yourself.
#1 Come to Besiktas - 2017
The crown jewel of all transfer announcements. Besiktas' hilarious video was uploaded by the club's official account on August 3, 2017, and it has been retweeted and liked over 130,000 times combined at the time of writing this. If Carlsberg made low-budget edits of funny transfer announcements, this would be it.
In terms of production value, the Besiktas video would rank low as it seems like a very low-budget indie film. However, the video is so bad that it is good, and for much of 2017, "Come to Besiktas" became a meme in the world of football, which does the rounds to this day. All thanks to this one video.
The video follows Ricardo Quaresma, Pepe, and Alvaro Negredo speaking to each other on the phone. Quaresma convinces Pepe to leave Real Madrid for his team by just saying: "Hello, come to Besiktas". Pepe then proceeds to use the same tactic on Negredo, and it works, as the striker agrees to join Besiktas.
The acting, music, and the production of this video was so bad that it turned out to be a genius move. The footballing community lapped it up, and the campaign became viral. As such, this famous video clip deserves its place at the top of this list.
