No stranger at Bayern Munich: the drama surrounding Noah Atubolu is also down to a complete misjudgement by his agent

Goalkeepers looking for a new club are not finding it easy these days. Their relationship status with the transfer market is complicated. Noah Atubolu's so-far more than sobering summer serves as a prime example.

Noah Atubolu had pictured his current reality very differently. While his team-mates recently prepared for the new season against a picturesque Alpine backdrop, he stayed behind alone at SC Freiburg's training ground. Months after submitting his transfer request, with a year still left on his contract, he remains a long way from his goal of joining a top European club, preferably in England.

The 24-year-old still has not found a new club that meets his demands. A quick solution is not on the horizon. The highly talented goalkeeper, seen as one for the DFB's future, has badly misjudged the situation. "Perhaps we all underestimated a little how late momentum comes into this particular goalkeeper market," SC sporting director Klemens Hartenbach recently told kicker.

Atubolu is not the only one struggling to find a move. Other prominent cases underline the point: Marc-Andre ter Stegen's loan switch to Ajax Amsterdam has dragged on for weeks, the previously clubless Stefan Ortega made what initially looked like an unusual move to Olympiakos Piraeus, and Alexander Nübel also failed to land in one of the top leagues and, somewhat surprisingly, signed for Besiktas Istanbul.

Simply saying the goalkeeper market is oversaturated would be too easy. Several factors help explain why highly gifted keepers at club level have to settle for supposedly smaller moves or may even be left behind altogether.

Stagnant goalkeeper market: the main problem lies in England

England is the main reason the market has barely moved. More specifically, it is the Premier League, as Markus Krösche recently pointed out in kicker. "You can tell that all clubs first have to sell. The buyers' market in England is only really starting now. They bring the money into the market - all the other countries do not really bring much money into the market any more. Bayern have now invested, but that is our industry's leading force with different framework conditions. All the other clubs are waiting for sales because they need income. We have already taken in more than 80 million euros, which was certainly also helpful for our transfers on the incoming side," said Eintracht Frankfurt's board member for sport.

Krösche was not talking only about goalkeepers, but about the global market as a whole. Outside the very biggest clubs, the rest of Europe's leagues are dependent on the island in one way or another. Mid-table and lower-ranking sides in Spain, France and Italy, beyond the elite such as Barca, Real, Inter or PSG, are not in a position to sign a keeper or outfield player who could trigger a market-shifting domino effect.

According to information from SPOX, a reserve goalkeeper in the Premier League earns more than some number ones in the other top leagues. Most of the money only starts flowing into the rest of Europe once the English market wakes up, spilling down through the leagues like a waterfall. In England, though, movement traditionally comes very late, and that has also shown in the quiet transfer window so far. The summer lull does not just apply to football. It applies to the market too.

Absurd imbalance: Man City reserve keeper moves for more than €40m

James Trafford's impending move offers another sign of that imbalance. According to matching media reports, Leeds United are set to pay well over 40 million euros to Manchester City for Gianluigi Donnarumma's deputy, who since returning in summer 2025 has at least played 17 matches for his boyhood club despite being number two. Even so, his game time does not justify the absurdly high sum of 31.2 million euros that the Sky Blues paid to Burnley FC for the then 22-year-old via a release clause, and yet Man City are still making a hefty profit on the short spell.

Olympique Marseille are expected to bring in Rulli as the replacement, giving him one more payday at 34 before the end of his career. But even with the comparatively modest millions from Manchester, the French club cannot afford a new number one from Atubolu's bracket, one expected to bring Freiburg around 20 million euros, because the financial power simply is not there in France. Instead, they will shop one or two shelves lower.

Nübel's situation follows a similar pattern. In the case of the World Cup traveller, who was last on loan at VfB Stuttgart for three years, the financial side also played the key role in his surprising and widely questioned move from the top leagues to Besiktas Istanbul. England, his preferred destination, offered him no market. Clubs outside the island, meanwhile, were nowhere near able to finance the overall package of fee and high salary.

To make up the shortfall in his wages, he is even said to have demanded a compensatory payment from FCB. The money behind the top Turkish club, who have struggled in recent years, comes from a property development project expected to generate up to 400 million euros in revenue. According to information from SPOX, the move to the Turkish metropolis was ultimately a consensus decision based on the full package and a guaranteed starting spot at a potential European competition participant. Similar to Ortega.

Tap turned off: Saudi Arabia no longer an alternative to England

If less money is available, only one route remains: move quickly and take the initiative. In Germany, that pattern has been obvious for years. Even Bayern Munich, who are far ahead financially, completed their incoming business early with the signings of Nathaniel Brown and Ismael Saibari and will not change course unless one of their big stars unexpectedly leaves after all.

The World Cup has also further delayed movement in the transfer market. Attention was on America, while players and agents first went on holiday and are only now gradually returning to day-to-day business. On top of that, the Saudi Arabian market has changed noticeably. The wealthy sheikhs appear to have turned off the tap, removing an alternative market to England. Current rumours around Cristiano Ronaldo's club Al-Nassr back that up, according to which the desert state's sovereign wealth funds (PIF) have imposed a transfer ban on the club because of its high mountain of debt. Those liabilities are said to total just over 187 million euros.

Experience suggests the market will not properly come alive again until mid-August, when players can put themselves in the shop window and impress in league matches. That leaves selling clubs with even less time to find replacements, which then pushes prices up. It is a familiar pattern from recent years, and one that naturally suits the waiting clubs in England once again.

That is why SC Freiburg moved early to line up Mio Backhaus, for 12 million euros from Werder Bremen, as Atubolu's successor even though he has not actually left yet. Otherwise, the Breisgau club would have risked going into the final days before the 1 September deadline without a replacement if he departed late in the window. The expected fee from an Atubolu sale would also almost certainly have driven up the demands made of SCF.

Not unknown to Bayern either: Noah Atubolu's adviser has miscalculated

All of that makes the situation Atubolu has got himself into, or been led into, even more surprising. It is hard to avoid the suspicion that he, and especially his advisers, completely misread the market. Everyone should have known the goalkeeper market is harder in general because each team has fewer spots to fill. Even then, this kind of misjudgement is difficult to explain.

His agency is not an unknown one either. Since January 2026, a few months before his transfer request became public, Atubolu has been represented by Epic Sports under star agent Ali Barat, who is also no stranger to Bayern Munich. Last summer, the Iranian brokered Nicolas Jackson's costly loan move to Chelsea and then largely celebrated himself for it in a more than bizarre press release under the headline "Ali Barat has redefined the game". The statement appeared just 13 minutes after the official transfer announcement, including figures that are usually never made public in such detail in the industry.

Barat's client list now includes a mix of players with profile and status, which makes the misreading in Atubolu's case look even more surprising. The same goes for the fact that at the end of 2025 he was named best agent of the year by Italian sports paper Tuttosport. It was the second time after 2023, putting him level with fellow two-time winner and long-time CR7 adviser Jorge Mendes (Gestifute).

He has not yet been able to deliver his client's dream move to the island, though, with Atubolu having been "a big fan" of the Premier League "since he was little". According to Hartenbach, Atubolu is now in a transition phase and is "holding personal talks with clubs himself". The hoped-for domino effect still has not materialised and, in his position, may not happen at all. On top of that, he still has certain expectations of his next club. Hull City and Coventry City were reportedly at least one size too small for him. Atubolu is said to have rejected both promoted clubs.

His search for the best possible solution cannot drag on much longer. Otherwise, Atubolu risks losing a year in the Freiburg stands, with no chance to recommend himself to new Germany head coach Jürgen Klopp for the vacant role of number one. For now, his relationship status with his dream destination remains complicated, and of all things it is the Premier League itself that is to blame.

Kaynak: Goal.com. Telif hakkı kaynak yayına aittir; buradaki metin özet/atıftır.

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