Folarin Balogun's Transfer Saga: Everton's Missed Opportunity
Folarin Balogun’s private jet cut through the grey Merseyside sky on Tuesday lunchtime. By the time it touched down at Liverpool John Lennon Airport, people inside Everton were already talking about him as the missing piece.
They had an agreement with Monaco: €45million (£39m, $52m), plus €5m in add-ons, for the United States striker who had lit up the World Cup. The club had chased a forward all summer. Now, finally, they had one.
Or so they thought.
Optimism at Finch Farm
At Finch Farm, the mood on Tuesday bordered on giddy. Three signings, three medicals, all in one day: Balogun, Ainsley Maitland-Niles from Lyon, and Jack Grealish back on loan from Manchester City.
Balogun was the jewel. Everton had been in talks with his camp for weeks, but only in the final days of the window did the numbers and the timing fall into place. If he signed, he would walk into the wage bracket occupied by Jordan Pickford, Jarrad Branthwaite and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall. A statement forward for a club trying to drag itself out of mediocrity.
Monaco were ready. They had mapped out this summer as Balogun’s exit point after three seasons in the Principality and a World Cup in which he scored three times in four games. Internally, they felt he was ready for the next step. CEO Thiago Scuro even said so publicly on Wednesday, pointing out that Monaco had already worked on replacing him.
The numbers backed that confidence. Nineteen goals in all competitions last season, including a ruthless run of 10 in 10. Seven Ligue 1 goals in his first campaign despite four missed penalties, a second season disrupted by a shoulder injury, and then the explosion.
Everton were so convinced the deal would go through that they green-lit Beto’s sale to Fiorentina for €18m. One striker out, a bigger one in. Clean, logical business.
Then the day began to twist.
The first cracks
The jet from Nice was supposed to leave early on Tuesday morning. It didn’t. Departure was pushed back, and Balogun only landed around lunchtime.
Routine checks followed. Everton asked for GPS data on the player, standard practice to understand physical load and conditioning. What they saw raised internal concerns.
By 7pm, with the window already frantic, Everton told Monaco that Balogun’s medical had flagged an issue serious enough to jeopardise the move.
Scuro, speaking the next day, could barely hide his disbelief.
“Around 7pm we were contacted by Everton, raising questions on the medical of Balogun, which for our medical staff, and for the personal medical staff of the player, made totally no sense,” he said. “The explanations were not enough to justify or bring concerns of the future of the player, which there is not.”
That doubt from Everton did more than stall one transfer. It cracked open the entire final evening.
Chelsea smell an opening
Monaco’s position at the start of the day had been clear: Balogun could go, Lamine Camara could not. The Senegal midfielder, 22, was earmarked to stay another season.
Chelsea had been hovering around Camara for 10 days, talking, probing, waiting. Once Everton’s concerns surfaced, the dynamic shifted. Scuro admitted that Chelsea sensed their moment, especially after they agreed to sell Enzo Fernandez to Manchester City.
“‘OK, Monaco needs money. Balogun is struggling there. Let’s go. Let’s try’,” Scuro recalled of Chelsea’s thinking. “Chelsea came and called us. ‘Oh, maybe I can be here for the solution’. And at that moment, we had to open the door for the discussion.”
By around 8pm, Monaco were negotiating with Chelsea over Camara. Barely an hour later, a €55m (£47.2m; $63.7m) fee was agreed. Camara accepted a six-year deal with an option for a seventh. He even passed his medical.
While that unfolded, Everton scrambled. With Balogun in doubt, they turned to old names and familiar faces. Joshua Zirkzee, once a trialist in their youth ranks, now at Manchester United. Tammy Abraham at Aston Villa.
Everton contacted United about Zirkzee at 5pm and followed up with a formal offer at 8pm. United said no, unwilling to lose the forward without time to find a replacement. Abraham, meanwhile, made it clear he wanted to stay at Villa.
The clock ticked. Options vanished.
A revived deal – and a brutal twist
Then came the late swerve.
Everton and Monaco reworked the Balogun deal. The structure changed: less money up front, more performance-related add-ons. The player’s personal terms stayed the same. The medical concerns no longer looked like a deal-breaker, at least on the buying side.
With Balogun seemingly back on track to join, Monaco called Chelsea at 11pm. Camara, they said, was no longer for sale. The deal was off.
Chelsea were furious. Camara, who had agreed terms and completed his medical, was crushed. Inside Stamford Bridge, Monaco’s conduct was viewed as extraordinary and deeply unprofessional.
Still, the Balogun move looked set. Everton and Monaco filed a dealsheet before the 11pm Premier League deadline, buying an extra hour to finish the paperwork. Scuro laid out the sequence.
“The Premier League has a mechanism in which you can request one extra hour to finish the paperwork,” he said. “This was done. Five minutes to close the transfer window for us to finish all the paperwork between Monaco and Everton and Balogun. I signed the contract, Everton signed the contract.
“At the last moment, the player decided not to sign. And basically, Balogun’s allegation is that I’m not feeling well because of the way the club treated me. I’m not feeling well because Everton’s medical department raised doubts about my future or my health. I have nothing, so I’m not comfortable to sign a long contract here. And that’s the way we finish our transfer window.
“It’s the first time in my career that I saw a last day like this.”
The Premier League mechanism could not help now. Balogun refused. The deal died on the spot.
Chelsea could not revive Camara either; their dealsheet had never been signed by Monaco. The dominoes stopped mid-fall.
Collateral damage everywhere
The collapse didn’t just hit the headline names.
Erik Lira’s move from Cruz Azul to Monaco was tied to Balogun’s departure, which would have freed up a non-EU spot in the French club’s squad. With Balogun staying, Lira’s transfer also fell apart.
No one came out of the night happy.
Monaco failed to cash in on a major asset and missed their chance to reshape the squad. Everton ended the window with just one senior striker, Thierno Barry. Chelsea were left livid, their recruitment plans shredded in the final hour. Camara’s camp felt betrayed.
Diomansy Kamara, the former Fulham forward who represents Camara and Crystal Palace’s Ismaila Sarr, went public with his anger. In an Instagram post, he argued that African players deserved far greater respect.
“We need to move away from this way of thinking in which an African player can sometimes be made to feel like a mere commodity: we buy him, set his price, negotiate his future, and too often, his own wishes seem to come second,” he wrote. “A transfer should not be merely a matter between two clubs and numbers.
“Behind every contract, there is a person, a career, dreams, and life choices. Clubs may sometimes have the final say — that is a reality of professional football. But one question remains: what about the player’s career and his own wishes? The player must be heard and respected in the decisions that determine his future.”
His words cut to the heart of a deadline day that treated players like pieces on a board.
Everton’s window unravels
For Everton, the Balogun saga capped a bleak summer.
Fan favourite Iliman Ndiaye left for Manchester City. A proposed sale of academy product Harrison Armstrong to Nottingham Forest collapsed under the weight of supporter fury. The club’s social media team, posting about a “Toffee Doughnut” at 10.10pm on deadline night, became an easy target for ridicule from a fanbase desperate for a striker, not a snack.
Above it all, The Friedkin Group, which owns both Everton and Roma, juggled drama on two fronts. In Italy, Roma head coach Gian Piero Gasperini vetoed the sale of key midfielder Manu Kone to Chelsea. Jamie Leweling’s move from Stuttgart also fell through.
Everton now plan to revisit the striker market in January. Until then, the burden falls on Barry. Tyrique George may be pushed into a central role if needed, with Brennan Johnson and Tyler Dibling seen as other attacking options. It is a thin hand to play across a long season.
Monaco face PSG, Balogun faces questions
At Monaco, attention turns sharply to Paris Saint-Germain away on Friday, even if the fallout from deadline day still hangs in the air.
Scuro, looking drained at Wednesday’s press conference, insisted he did not want to “create a war” with Chelsea or Everton. French Football News reported that Camara returned to training, while Balogun stayed away.
“For Balogun, I only spoke to him by phone,” Scuro said. “His arguments are clear. He’s coming back. I think he took the decision. There is not a big reason for him to be affected too much because it’s his decision.
“On Lamine, I really respect and understand. Because the player might have got excited during the day by conversations with the coach, by everything that a club like Chelsea can propose and promise to a player.”
Monaco coach Filipe Luis expects Camara to play against PSG.
“He is 100% able to play, and he needs to play. His head needs to be where he loves, on the pitch,” he said, as reported by Get French Football News.
Scuro also took aim at the French window’s earlier closing time of 8pm, which prevented Monaco from lining up replacements once the chaos began. He suggested France should consider aligning with countries that keep their market open longer.
Balogun back in the spotlight
Balogun now returns to Monaco with a contract running until 2028 and a storm swirling around him.
He has lived with controversy before. At the World Cup, he became a global talking point when a red-card suspension was overturned before the knockout tie against Belgium after an intervention from U.S. President Donald Trump.
He has changed agents recently, moving to Jorge Mendes from Eddie Bonsu’s Elite Project Group. Arsenal, who sold him to Monaco in 2023 for €40m including add-ons, inserted a 17.5 per cent sell-on clause. They will be watching his next move closely.
The Premier League door is shut until January. Turkey and Saudi Arabia remain options, their windows still open, their clubs always ready to move quickly for a forward with goals and a point to prove.
But after a deadline day that left three clubs angry, one midfielder disillusioned and one striker refusing to sign at the last second, where does Balogun go from here — and who will dare build their next big plan around him?
