Football Transfer Predictions: Latest Data on Potential Moves Ahead of Deadline Day

The action may be getting underway on the pitch across Europe’s top leagues, but for many football fans the big focus for the rest of August remains the transfer market.
There have already been two British-record transfers this summer, with Elliot Anderson moving to Manchester City for £116 million and then Morgan Rogers joining Chelsea for £117 million, while Real Madrid have spent €125 million on exciting Ivory Coast winger Yan Diomande from RB Leipzig.

With transfer deadline day on Tuesday, September 1, fast approaching, there’s plenty more money that could be spent on some of the biggest names in the sport.

Football transfer prediction markets move quickly as new information emerges, so every probability in this article is a snapshot read live on Friday 21 August 2026. Click through to the live markets for the current prices.

One note on how we quote them. A price is only worth printing when somebody is actually offering it, and on these markets that varies enormously. Where the gap between the best bid and the best ask is a fraction of a point, the number is real. Where it runs to twenty or thirty points, the midpoint is an average of two prices nobody is trading at, and we say so rather than printing it.

Julian Alvarez: Staying at Atletico Madrid or off to Barcelona?

One of the biggest potential transfers of the summer is still very much up in the air.

Argentina striker Julian Alvarez wants his club Atletico Madrid to ‘fulfil his dream’ and sell him to La Liga rivals Barcelona, but they are so far refusing to play ball. (source: https://www.skysports.com/transfer/news/12691/13556913/julian-alvarez-atletico-madrid-striker-says-he-wants-to-leave-club-to-fulfil-his-dream). Atletico also rejected a bid of €150m from fierce rivals Real Madrid earlier this summer.

Atletico coach Diego Simeone dropped Alvarez from the club’s opening game of the season (source: https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/julian-alvarez-transfer-news-atletico-madrid-barcelona-b3034870.html), and the club’s CEO Miguel Angel Gil Marin is adamant they will reject transfer offers of as much as €200 million (source: https://efe.com/deportes/2026-07-17/atletico-de-madrid-ofertas-julian-alvarez/).

It means the markets are not so much predicting where Alvarez will play next season - they are pricing who will come out on top between the club and player's wishes.

Polymarket’s Julian Alvarez next club prediction market (https://polymarket.com/event/where-will-julian-alvarez-transfer-20260612230221012?via=ipredicta-co) gives a 77% probability of him staying at Atletico, with Barcelona at 11%.

Arsenal, who are also said to be keen on the player, are on 11% in the same market, level with Barcelona.

Kalshi’s Julian Alvarez next club prediction market (https://kalshi.com/markets/kxjoinclub/soccer-join-club/kxjoinclub-26oct02jalvarez) is close to that, with Atletico at 76%, Barcelona at 14% and Arsenal at 11%. That Kalshi board has traded roughly 359,000 contracts, making it comfortably the deepest of the five markets in this piece.

As it stands, the prediction markets suggest Atlético are set to win this club-versus-player transfer tussle.

Bradley Barcola to Liverpool transfer gathering momentum

On the flip side to the Alvarez-Atletico saga, one potential big deal where an exit is rated vastly more likely than staying put involves France star Bradley Barcola.

He’s been linked with both Liverpool and Arsenal this summer, and it’s the former who are given an 83% chance of getting the deal done in Kalshi’s Bradley Barcola next club prediction market (https://kalshi.com/markets/kxjoinclub/soccer-join-club/kxjoinclub-26oct02bbarcola).

Arsenal come next at 5%, with a stay at Paris St-Germain on 15%, meaning a move to Merseyside is looking increasingly likely for the winger.

Polymarket’s Bradley Barcola next club prediction market (https://polymarket.com/event/where-will-bradley-barcola-transfer-20260612224628256?via=ipredicta-co) sees it much the same way, with Liverpool given an 85.8% probability of signing him.

Polymarket has him a little less likely to stay in France, at 10.4%, with an Arsenal switch at 5.1%.

One caveat before setting those two numbers side by side, because it explains part of the gap. The two contracts do not close on the same day. Polymarket is written around the 1 September deadline, while the Kalshi market runs to 9 October. Kalshi is therefore pricing an extra five weeks in which a move could still happen, so a slightly different number is partly runway rather than disagreement.

With both markets giving Liverpool north of 80%, the consensus is clear enough: Barcola is far more likely to be playing at Anfield than Paris Saint-Germain when the window closes.

Enzo Fernandez saga: Could Chelsea star be off to Man City?

Another transfer saga that continues to rumble on involves Argentina and Chelsea midfielder Enzo Fernandez.

He’s reportedly wanted by new Manchester City manager Enzo Maresca, who worked with Fernandez at Chelsea before moving north to the Etihad to replace Pep Guardiola.

Chelsea put a £120 million asking price on his head - but also a deadline for City to complete the deal.

With that deadline expired, the whole thing just drew to a close, right? Wrong.

City are said to still be pursuing Fernandez, and the football transfer prediction markets are pricing things far closer than the Alvarez or Barcola potential moves. (source: https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11095/13573958/enzo-fernandez-transfer-news-man-city-remain-interested-in-chelsea-midfielder-despite-missing-deadline-to-make-bid)

Polymarket’s Enzo Fernandez next club prediction market (https://polymarket.com/event/where-will-enzo-fernandez-transfer-20260612231640461?via=ipredicta-co) puts a Chelsea stay as the most likely outcome, but only at 62%. Manchester City are given 30.5%, and both sides of that market are quoted within two points, so these are prices somebody is genuinely offering rather than a wide book averaged out.

It makes the Fernandez saga one of the most finely balanced big-name transfer markets of the summer, and suggests this one could go right to the wire.

Unlike the other moves in this piece, there is no Kalshi price to set alongside it. That is a matter of coverage rather than a gap in the product: Kalshi runs a next-club series and prices 33 players in it, including Alvarez, Barcola, Morgan Rogers and Elliot Anderson. Fernandez is simply not one of them. Worth knowing if you go looking, because the neighbouring Kalshi board does list Bruno Fernandes, who is a different footballer entirely.

Where will Emiliano Martínez play next season?

Emiliano Martínez has played a vital role in Aston Villa’s rise from relegation scrappers to regular top-five finishers in the Premier League, but could he soon be packing his bags for a new employer?

The Argentina goalkeeper looks like he could be replaced by Parma goalkeeper Zion Suzuki, who Villa are reportedly close to signing for £30 million (source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/ckg44n858qvo).

He could be viewed as a longer-term successor to the 33-year-old Martínez, but there’s currently no clear consensus over what will happen next, with a move to Juventus having reportedly fallen through (source: https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/40078810/emi-martinez-juventus-transfer-collapses/).

Polymarket’s Emiliano Martínez next club prediction market (https://polymarket.com/event/where-will-emiliano-martinez-transfer-20260612234353773?via=ipredicta-co) has Aston Villa as the clear favourite to keep him, and this is a market where we are not going to print the headline number.

The reason is worth spelling out, because it is a different objection from the one we usually make. This is not a market nobody has traded: almost $70,000 has gone through it, and $57,000 of that on the Villa outcome alone. The problem is the state of the book right now. Villa are quoted 56 bid against 85 ask, a 29-point spread, and Chelsea 2 against 22. A midpoint drawn from a book that wide is the average of two prices nobody is offering, so quoting Villa at "71%" would invent a precision the market does not have.

So: Villa are somewhere between the high fifties and the mid eighties, Chelsea a distant second, and Juventus, Manchester United and Bayern Munich are all long shots. The only leg tight enough to put a number on is Al-Hilal, at 2.7% on a book quoted 2.1 against 3.3.

It is also worth knowing what the board looks like underneath. Sixteen outcomes are listed, but ten of them are unfilled slots labelled Team B through Team J and Other, sitting at zero bid against one hundred ask with no volume behind them. They are the contract's construction rather than an opinion anyone holds.

Marcus Rashford’s last chance to shine at Man Utd?

Marcus Rashford hasn’t played a competitive match for Manchester United since December 12, 2024, when he featured in the Europa League against Viktoria Plzen..

The academy graduate was sent out on loan to Aston Villa for the second half of the 2024-25 season before joining Barcelona for the whole of the following campaign.

The Spanish giants decided not to make his temporary move permanent, meaning the England international is back at Old Trafford and facing an uncertain future at his boyhood club.

It looks increasingly likely that he could stick around at United for the first time in 18 months, with Polymarket’s Marcus Rashford transfer prediction market (https://polymarket.com/event/where-will-marcus-rashford-transfer-20260612223855109?via=ipredicta-co) giving a 90.8% probability of a stay under manager Michael Carrick.

That has moved about ten points in a matter of days, and it is one of the few figures in this piece worth quoting to a decimal. The book is 90.8 bid against 90.9 ask: a one-tenth spread, which is a price people are actively trading, against the twenty-nine points between the two sides of the Martinez market. A return to Barcelona sits at 2.1% and a switch to Chelsea at 0.9%, with a host of other sides at 1% or less.

Every probability above was read live on Friday 21 August 2026, ten days before the deadline. These markets move on a single reliable report, so treat them as a snapshot rather than a settled view.

How do football transfer prediction markets work?

How Prediction markets work is by allowing traders to buy and sell contracts based on the likelihood of a particular outcome. In a football transfer market, that might mean predicting which club a player will join before the transfer window closes - or whether they will stay.

A contract priced at 70% effectively represents a market-implied probability of 70%, although the price can move constantly as traders respond to new information.

That means transfer prediction markets can change rapidly when a club makes a bid, a player or club spokesperson speaks publicly or a trusted and reliable deal is reported by a journalist.

The markets therefore offer a live snapshot of what traders currently believe is most likely to happen, rather than a guarantee that a transfer will be completed.

That's important because a 70% probability still means the market believes there is a 30% chance the outcome doesn't happen.