The coronavirus pandemic made the summer transfer market unlike any before it, but there were still plenty of deals done, and you can check out the major ones here. The window might be closed across the top leagues in Europe, but here are the best rumours from around the globe.
TOP STORY: Inter interested in Wijnaldum
Barcelona aren't the only club interested in adding Georginio Wijnaldum to their midfield, with Calciomercato reporting that Internazionale are also keen.
Wijnaldum is approaching a crossroads in his career. Recently having turned 30, he must decide whether he wants to stay at Liverpool, with whom he has already won everything, or move on to a new club.
With his contract due to expire in June 2021, he has been offered a pay raise to stay at Liverpool, but Barcelona and now Inter are among those looking to tempt him away from Anfield.
Barca failed in their mission to sign the Dutchman in the summer, and now Inter would like to take advantage and try their luck in January. Inter's chief executive Giuseppe Marotta has reportedly requested information about the possibility of a move, though he has not made an official proposal as yet.
Inter are looking at options involving their own midfielders including Christian Eriksen, Radja Nainggolan and Matias Vecino and, if they can sell one or more of them, they'll be in a stronger position when it comes to making a bid for their targets.
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23.00 BST: That will do it for the latest edition of our LIVE Transfer Talk blog. We hoped you enjoyed following along with us and remind you to check back shortly for the latest transfer rumours, reports and completed deals. Goodnight!
22.22 BST: With Barcelona required to cut down their team salary to €382.7 million, per new La Liga rules, the club will have tough decisions to make come January.
With Ronald Koeman keen to add Lyon's Memphis Depay and Man City's Eric Garcia once the transfer window re-opens, Barcelona will first need to sell. In fact, the Mirror calculates that Barca will need to sell FOUR players to add Depay and Garcia and remain under the new cap. Those four players are Samuel Umtiti, Junior Firpo, Martin Braithwaite and Matheus Fernandes.
Can Barcelona find suitors for all four? The potential additions of Depay and Garcia will depend upon it...
21.43 BST: Is former MLS star Miguel Almiron headed for a Newcastle exit?
The Paraguayan, who has had a mixed time on Tyneside since arriving for a club-record £21 million in Jan 2018, has started just four of Newcastle's eight games this season, something his agent does not seem very happy about.
Daniel Campos hinted about Almiron's future in an appearance on Paraguayan radio station Futgol 970, via The Chronicle Live.
"Miguel Almirón was being observed by Atletico Madrid but no offer was made. When everything returns to normal, Miguel will take a leap in quality," Campos said.
"Miguel's work rate at Newcastle and Paraguay has been great. If it wasn't for the pandemic, he would've been elsewhere. Perhaps he would like to play on a team that has a lot of possession. Maybe in June, he'll make that jump."
Almiron, 26, has tallied just four league goals and three assists in 53 games for the club.
20.53 BST: Never seemingly fully happy with life at Chelsea, Jorginho seems to always be linked with a return to Serie A.
Recent comments from his agent Joao Santos to Calciomercato will hardly do much to quell speculation about the midfielder's future.
"Almost all the Italy players are in Serie A, as it's an important league, but his journey took him to London.
"If Maurizio Sarri had remained, perhaps he'd have joined Juventus.
"Jorginho has a personal and professional bond with the coach that is very strong. We're waiting to see where Sarri goes, and if it's a big club in Italy, Jorginho could follow him."
Jorginho, who was also linked with a move to Sarri's Juventus before he was sacked, has previously played for the Italian manager at Napoli (2015-18) and Chelsea ( 2018-19).
20.00 BST: Middlesbrough have signed free agent and former Sunderland forward Duncan Watmore to a short-term contract.
The ex-Black Cat, now 26, last appeared in a first-team game in 2019, having dealt with various injuries in recent seasons. Watmore had been training with Boro for a number of weeks and apparently did enough to earn a contract from Neil Warnock's side.
18:52 GMT: Juventus are 'in talks' over the signing of Wolves forward Pedro Neto, according to the Daily Mail.
Neto, 20, joined Wolves from Braga in 2019 and penned an initial five year-deal at the Molineux, the player also enjoyed a spell on-loan at Lazio.
The Turin side believe they can agree a deal for the Portuguese winger thanks to their relationship with Cristiano Ronaldo's agent Jorge Mendes, who is heavily involved with the midlands club and would help broker a deal between the two parties.
Juventus are keen to add their attacking options in January, the Old Lady sit fifth in Serie A under manager Andrea Pirlo.
18:20 GMT: West Bromwich Albion and West Ham have been offered to sign Real Madrid forward Mariano Diaz, writes the Daily Mail.
Mariano, 27, re-joined Real in 2018 for €33 million, 14 months after being sold by the club to Lyon. But Real are willing to let the player leave, initially on loan, after falling out of manager Zinedine Zidane's plans.
West Brom and West Ham are both interested in the player, with the player prefering to move to a club in London.
The forward has made only one La Liga appearance for Real Madrid this season.
17:58 GMT: West Ham and Fulham are one of a number of clubs monitoring Philadelphia Union left-back Kai Wagner, according to the Daily Mail.
Wagner, 23, formerly of Augsburg and Schalke, is one of the top performers in the MLS this season starting 14 times and scoring once.
The defender is valued at £3.5 million with Premier League scouts reported to be watching Wagner's progress keenly.
17:30 GMT: Wolves winger Adama Traore has stalled over contract negotiations with the club due to a lack of playing time, according to Goal.com.
Traore, 24, has not started a league game since Wolves' 4-0 defeat at the hands of West Ham at the end of September.
Since the defeat to the Hammers, the winger has been relegated to a role as an impact subsitute with the player off the bench in each of Wolves' last five league games.
Liverpool, Manchester City and Barcelona are all said to be interested in the player. Traore has spent five years in England since joining Aston Villa from Barcelona in 2015.
16:45 GMT: Arsenal could send highly-rated defender William Saliba out on loan in January, according to the Evening Standard.
Saliba, 19, is yet to make his Arsenal debut and is reported to be frustrated with his lack of playing time at the Emirates.
Joining the Gunners in 2019 for £27 million, Saliba was immediately sent out on loan to French side Saint-Etienne for the 2019/20 season.
The defender has not been included in Arsenal's Europa League squad and has been made to train with the Under-23s.
15:44 GMT: Inter Milan coach Antonio Conte believes his time at Chelsea could have been different if the Blues captured the signings of Romelu Lukaku and Virgil Van Dijk, reports to the Telegraph.
"I asked for two players and we were very, very close after we won the league. One player was Romelu Lukaku, the second player was Virgil van Dijk, and these two players were very, very close," Conte said.
"It was a pity that it didn't happen and Romelu is showing with Inter Milan that my idea was right and also Van Dijk has shown with Liverpool that my idea was right for the club."
Conte got his wish to sign Lukaku whilst managing Inter Milan, Lukaku joined the Italian side from Manchester United in Aug. 2019 for €80m.
15:20 GMT: Arsenal midfielder Matteo Guendouzi is "hard to manage" according to one of his former bosses, reports the Mirror.
Mikael Landreau, who managed Guendouzi at Ligue 1 side Lorient, opened up on his time whilst managing the midfielder to French channel Canal+.
"He annoyed me terribly, he is very complicated to manage. He sometimes has some behaviours within a group that are very, very hard," Landreau said.
Guendouzi is on-loan at German side Hertha Berlin having fallen out with Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta.
14:30 GMT: La Liga president Javier Tebas has said Manchester City would only be able to sign Barcelona forward Lionel Messi as they operate outside FFP, writes ESPN's Sam Marsden.
"The only club in the Premier League that talks about registering Messi is Manchester City," Tebas said in a news conference on Tuesday when asked if he was worried about the prospect Messi departing La Liga for England.
"Since Man City compete outside the rules, what I am worried about is that they are able to access a player by breaching UEFA's [FFP] rules. It is not only me complaining about this. [Liverpool coach Jurgen] Klopp and [Tottenham's Jose] Mourinho have also complained about City."
Messi told Barca he wanted to leave the club in the summer but the Catalan side refused to let him leave. The player's contract runs out in June 2021 allowing Messi to leave for free to other clubs.
13:45 GMT: Chelsea could have to sell up to five players in order to fund a move for West Ham United's Declan Rice, reports the Express.
Rice, 21, was a top target for the Blues during the summer transfer window with manager Frank Lampard a keen admirer of the England youngster. The move for Rice will reportedly set Chelsea back £67 million.
Antonio Rudiger, Emerson Palmieri, Danny Drinkwater and Olivier Giroud have all been linked with permanent moves away from Stamford Bridge, with Chelsea keen to raise funds to fund Rice's transfer.
The Blues have already spent £250 million on Timo Werner, Hakim Ziyech, Kai Havertz, Edouard Mendy, Thiago Silva, Ben Chilwell and Malang Sarr.
13:00 GMT: Former Juventus midfielder Claudio Marchisio has urged Paul Pogba to return to Turin, writes the Mirror.
Pogba posted a picture of himself in training with the French international team on social media with the caption: "Head up, look forward!"
Marchisio replied: "Please @paulpogba. Come to @juventusfc, you will be happy again. Me too #tilltheend."
Pogba joined Manchester United from Juventus in 2016 for €105 million.
12:00 GMT: Clubs in La Liga have seen their salary caps reduced by €610 million in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic, writes ESPN's Sam Marsden and Moises Llorens.
The division's 20 clubs will only be allowed to spend €2.33 billion across the 2020-21 campaign on wages, a €610 reduction from the 2019/20 season.
Barcelona, who have the largest salary cap in the league at €671m, will have to cut down to the new €382.7m limit La Liga have introduced. The Catalan side have already reduced their wage bill following the departures of Luis Suarez, Arturo Vidal and Ivan Rakitic but could be forced to sell more players to adhere to the new La Liga limit.
Elsewhere, Real Madrid's spending limit has also been reduced by €172.5m and in Atletico Madrid's cap has been cut by €131.8m.
11.40 GMT: Barcelona winger Ousmane Dembele looks set to leave the club in the coming months.
Dembele, 23, has struggled with injury since joining for €105m from Dortmund in 2017. Manchester United have been following him, but Sport says that Arsenal are also in the race.
Barca are looking to raise funds amid their financial crisis to sign Memphis Depay from Lyon.
11.03 GMT: Atletico Madrid are finally seeing a return on their signing of Joao Felix in 2019, writes Sid Lowe.
Joao Felix was always going to be a bit special. There is a reason Atlético spent €127m on him, a club record. Well, there are many reasons, but one of them is a quality they believed could be generational. He was even presented as an Atletico player at the Prado museum -- in essence, an artist surrounded by artists. "He has acne, but the seriousness of a grown man," Jorge Valdano said, seeing in him a hint of early Kaká, the soft touch of a classic No.10. A poll in the sports daily Marca this week even asked if he was the most talented player in the club's entire history.
The man who discovered him said he would be a future Ballon d'Or winner, which he would, but that no longer sounds so silly. And yet, a year ago, it might have done. Twelve months on, it feels like he has found his place and they have found him.
10.27 GMT: According to former Camp Nou director Javier Bordas, Barcelona had the chance to sign Kylian Mbappe for €100m from Monaco and also turned down Erling Haaland before he joined Dortmund.
09.45 GMT: Real Madrid want Sergio Ramos to stay at the club, Diario AS reports, but won't risk the club's financial stability in the process and would understand if he accepted "an impossible-to-refuse offer" elsewhere.
Ramos will be free to negotiate with other clubs from Jan. 1, with his contract expiring next June, and reports in the same newspaper on Monday suggested Paris-Saint Germain are readying a mega-offer to tempt the defender away from the Bernabeu.
AS describes the relationship between captain Ramos and president Florentino Perez as "magnificent" but quotes a source as saying: "Sergio knows how far Real Madrid can go in a situation caused by the pandemic. If there's an offer of €20m per season after tax, as has been reported, the club will never go that far."
According to AS, Madrid's hands are tied by the need to make up for a €250m budget shortfall caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
09.02 GMT: Spain Under-21 star Pedri says he is thankful Real Madrid did not rate him highly enough to sign him as now he is at Barcelona.
Pedri, who signed for Barcelona this summer from Las Palmas, spent a week on trial at Real Madrid in February 2018. He told Cadena Ser: "I was a week on trial at Madrid. They told me I didn't have the level. They took me to an office and told me that. I'm thankful to them because now I am in the team I always wanted to be in."
Pedri, 17, added that it's a privilege to be playing alongside Lionel Messi.
"Of course I dreamt of playing with Messi, the same as many children," he said. "It's a reward life has given me. One of the things that surprises me the most about Messi is what he does in training. It's like Oliver and Benji [Captain Tsubasa cartoon] but real."
08.38 GMT: Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Harry Winks as concerned his recent lack of playing time at the club could harm his England and will look at his situation in the January transfer window, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Fewer than half of Winks' nine appearances this season for Spurs have come in the Premier League, and he was left out of the matchday squads for recent wins over West Bromwich Albion and Burnley.
Winks started in England's 3-0 friendly win over Republic of Ireland last week, and came on as a half-time substitute in Sunday's 2-0 loss against Belgium, and does not want to let his international prospects slip in the run-up to next summer's European Championship.
Asked if he needs to play more for Spurs, Winks told reporters: "Definitely, my situation at Tottenham is difficult at the moment and it's important that I keep fighting and working as hard as I can to stay in the squad and to stay in the team.
"Every time I get the opportunity for England, I love it. It's a great place to play football here, it's free and the lads get on really well, it's a great place to come to. I want to be a part of that in the Euros and I want to be in the starting XI in the Euros as well. But, yes, it's important that back at Tottenham I get the opportunities there and I stay in the team there as well."
08.00 BST: Sergio Ramos cancelled a news conference he was due to hold on Monday ahead of Spain's match with Germany to avoid adding to speculation about his Real Madrid future, sources have told ESPN's Alex Kirkland and Rodrigo Faez.
The national team captain was due to speak to the media in Seville alongside coach Luis Enrique, the day before a UEFA Nations League game (stream LIVE at 2:45 p.m. ET on ESPN+ in the U.S.) which Spain must win to progress to the competition's final phase.
Ramos -- who missed two penalties in Spain's 1-1 draw with Switzerland on Saturday -- was replaced at the conference by Manchester City midfielder Rodri. Sources told ESPN that Ramos preferred to focus on the Germany match and the player himself had chosen not to appear at the news conference.
ESPN reported at the start of November that Ramos and Real Madrid had begun initial talks about a renewal, with both intending to reach an agreement on an extension. The stumbling block has been the structure of that new deal as Ramos, 34, would like to stay at the Bernabeu until 2024.
Spanish outlet Diario AS reported on Monday that Paris Saint-Germain plan to make a move for Ramos in January if the talks continue to stall.
- Hamilton: Spain, Germany running out of time to get in shape for Euros
PAPER TALK (by Nick Judd)
Bayern and Real join clubs who want Szoboszlai
The race to sign FC Salzburg midfielder Dominik Szoboszlai is now between four clubs, according to the Daily Mail.
The report says that Bayern Munich and Real Madrid have joined Arsenal and AC Milan in the hunt for the 20-year-old.
The Hungary hotshot is a wanted man and Arsenal were thought to be leading the pack. However, the Mail has claimed other clubs are also interested, with Bayern Munich joining Real Madrid, the latter the result of Lothar Matthaus comparing Szoboszlai to Kai Havertz in a recent interview.
Madrid are looking to freshen up their midfield, while both AC Milan and Arsenal would welcome the player as an upgrade to their existing squads.
For their part, Bayern would be more of a long-term project for Szoboszlai, who plays for Hungary in a key Nations League match against Turkey on Wednesday.
Barca reveal four players up for sale in January
With Barcelona needing to raise funds before they can contemplate their own moves in the January transfer window, Spanish outlet Sport is reporting they're willing to part with Junior Firpo, Samuel Umtiti, Matheus Fernandes and Martin Braithwaite.
Barca are looking to make two signings in January as well as promoting players from the club's academy, but they need to bolster their funds.
Junior is the most advanced departure. He has had several offers from Italy, with Inter Milan and Napoli keen, and could cost either club around €20m.
Umtiti would be welcome to a loan move. He was the subject of interest from several clubs in the summer but he didn't seem keen to go at the time. Also, his salary continue to be a stumbling block, though Lyon and Roma are said to be monitoring his situation.
Tap-ins
- Former Liverpool striker Fabio Borini could be handed a lifeline by Turkish club Goztepe, reports Turkish title Sari Kirmizi. Borini, 29, has been reportedly training alone in a car park in Merseyside since leaving Hellas Verona last summer. Yet now it looks as though he could be set for a return to action in Turkey if he can agree terms with the Super Lig club, who are mid-table.
- Miguel Almiron is ready to leave Newcastle United, according to his agent, who was interviewed by a radio station in Paraguay. The Newcastle Chronicle has featured the interview in full, and in it agent Daniel Campos says that a number of English clubs have expressed an interest in the Paraguay international. He believes June could be a realistic time for Almiron to move on.
- Saint-Etienne are in the market for new faces in January, and L'Equipe believes they're considering a move for Leicester City's Islam Slimani. The Algerian has slipped down the pecking order at the King Power Stadium, and he has played just 19 minutes this season after returning from his Monaco loan.