John Mousinho’s transfer admission as Portsmouth face European recruitment battle

John Mousinho acknowledged Pompey are adapting to a more challenging landscape as they recruit from Europe.

And the Blues boss highlighted how the complexities of doing deals on the continent is making it tougher to get business over the line.

The European transfer challenge Pompey are facing

But Mousinho feels his club are coming to terms with what’s required, as they aim to focus business on landing players from overseas.

Pompey are pushing forward with their recruitment this summer, though it’s just a single new face through the door so far in Sydney FC’s Adrian Segecic.

The Blues are keen on Silkeborg’s Pelle Mattsson and have been linked with a succession of players operating away from English football. Westerlo’s Griffin Yow, Mjallby’s Abdoulie Manneh, Brescia’s Patrick Nuamah and MTK Budapest’s Mark Kosznovszky are some of the others who’ve been mentioned.

But getting those deals done isn’t proving a routine process.

Mousinho said: ‘It’s a different challenge, definitely a different challenge.

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‘I go back to that frame of reference of the first summer here when we picked up a lot of frees and probably had the pick of the loans coming to League One.

‘Then when spending small fees on players they were good enough to come in and impact us at the top of that level.

‘It’s just a different landscape and more challenging.

‘A lot of the work is done initially on video and then we try to go out and see as many players as we can. It just brings different challenges signing players from Europe and further afield.

‘We’ve had a bit of success signing players from Australia.

‘Certainly signing players from top or high level European leagues is just different. It’s certainly something we need to adjust to - and I think we are doing that.’

Compensation, contacts, agents and language barrier to overcome

Mousinho expanded on the reasons for the European deals taking longer, with some obvious factors and others not quite so apparent. The language barrier, cross-border compensation and having to work with a greater number of agents were some of the factors slowing transfer activity.

Mousinho added: ‘If you’re looking at Europe they’re naturally more complicated deals.

‘There’s more agents involved and there might be things like cross-border compensation.

‘There’s a lot of things to sort and it’s not as straightforward as operating in the UK.

‘I’m not saying UK deals are straightforward, but sometimes there’s things to think about like the language barrier.

‘You’re dealing with clubs you may not have dealt with before. If you look at the 91 other football clubs, we’ve probably got a contact there.

‘That’s not necessarily the case when signing a Nico Schmid or Elias Sorensen. It’s just a different set of circumstances and a different landscape to operate in.’

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