As football’s transfer market cranks back into action, one remembers the sad words of the English striker Luther Blissett. Milan bought Blissett from Watford in 1983, reputedly by mistake after confusing him with another black player. His sole, unhappy year in Italy gave football one of its greatest quotes. “No matter how much money you have here,” Blissett lamented, “you can’t seem to get Rice Krispies.”

There will be many more Blissetts this summer. Clubs still sign foreign players and tell them: “Here’s a plane ticket, come over, and play brilliantly from day one.” The player fails to adjust to the new country, underperforms, and his transfer fee of millions is wasted. This happens because football clubs are incompetent. Just as oil is part of the oil business, stupidity is part of the football business. When a senior Microsoft executive moves countries, a “relocation consultant” helps his family find schools, a house and learn the new country’s social rules. An expensive relocation might cost £15,000, or 0.1 per cent of a largish transfer fee. But football’s neglect of “relocation” is one of the many inefficiencies in the transfer market.