From 10 July 2029, every football agent who earns a fee for intermediary services becomes an obliged entity under EU Regulation 2024/1624. Every club that pays that fee has been an obliged entity since the same date. The money flowing through agent relationships is now the most scrutinised transaction category in professional football, and the regulatory framework that governs it is almost entirely unbuilt.

The transfer window concentrates more financial crime risk into a shorter period than almost any other event in professional sport. Hundreds of millions of pounds move in weeks. Intermediaries multiply. Ownership structures that took months to construct are tested in days. And most clubs enter the window with controls that were not designed for it. Here are the five failures we see most consistently -- and why each of them matters more than ever as the regulatory environment closes in.