FM24 Database Türkiye transfer banned teams error

There's a bug in the daily updated FM 24 database. While there are no transfer bans in the Turkish First League, clubs like Sakaryaspor and Ümraniyespor appear to have transfer bans in place. How do we fix this? I kindly request a fix.

@M.C you recently updated the bans?

These two clubs - as representative examples - raise an interesting point.

When I did the transfer bans file, it was based on the official FIFA Registration Bans database (https://knowledge.fifa.com/registration-bans). It's fully searchable.

FIFA maintains this list as a method to formally publish all clubs who are under some level of contractual registration embargo. They list clubs in two ways - either as having a ban ‘until lifted’ or for a pre-determined number of registration periods (transfer windows, effectively). The list of clubs on that page each have published outcomes of judicial/court hearings that result in their clubs being handed these punishments - that is, this is not speculative, but based on sporting law.

Typically, clubs who have been found guilty of transactional/minor misdemeanours have an ‘until lifted’ status. This typically signifies they have to pay off a remaining, small debt - or some other fine - and then they can resume registration activity as normal. Because of this, no clubs with this status only were included in the transfer bans file.

Clubs who have been found guilty of more serious misdemeanours (most often, it is due to historical transfer dealings, such as owing the selling club instalments or other fees, which have been escalated to the formal courts and resulted in this legal decision) are the ones that get pre-determined bans for a set number of windows. It is these ones that I have included in the file, because they are unlikely to be lifted sooner.

Strictly speaking, a ‘registration ban’ prevents the registration of new players from being registered as contracted to the club. It isn't, strictly, the same as a ban on acquiring the rights of a player (i.e. a transfer). But in practice, the two are pretty much equivalent. Indeed, news outlets interchange the terms - before committing to making the file, I cross-checked a variety of the clubs on the FIFA list for news of their ‘transfer’ or ‘registration’ bans and found plenty of official, local news sources reporting ‘transfer bans’ of the clubs listed (again, most of these official news sources use the FIFA Registration Bans list as their source). The words on the FIFA site itself mention this is about indicating which clubs are ineligible to sign new players. Perhaps more importantly, in the context of Football Manager, there is no method to specify a registration ban on an individual club for a set period of registration windows.

With reference to the specific examples called out: formally, both Sakaryaspor and Ümraniyespor are listed on this site with bans for pre-determined numbers of registration periods. Sakaryaspor's registration ban came into effect on 28/02/2025, for 3 registration periods. Ümraniyespor's came into effect on 07/04/2025, for 3 registration periods. These clubs may be signing players in the transfer market, but until FIFA formally acknowledge those registration bans as being lifted (by their disappearance from this published list), I would not expect either club to be allowed to register those new players for any formal, competitive competition.

I have actually been asked about the Sakaryaspor one, about a week ago. This was following the news that the ban was ‘expected’ to be lifted - Sakaryaspor had been found guilty of three misdemeanours, two of which they had satisfactorily resolved. I appreciate they - as a club - may expect to resolve the third, but until it is official I would prefer to be guided by official sources.

If the other staff/community here believe I have fundamentally misinterpreted the content of the FIFA Registration Bans list, I am happy to entirely withdraw the file from being part of the Data Update. I am not ‘attached’ to the data in any way - I am keen for this to be as accurate as possible.

So the long and short of it is that these clubs have a ban but we have no idea if it'll be a week, a month, 6 months or a year, so it's hard to implement?

Any idea how SI usually handle it?

Honestly, I don't think it's that much of an unknown. I think what FIFA publish is pretty robust - they publish the start date and clearly indicate the number of transfer windows. It's fairly official and, I would say, an authoritative source.

At this stage, I would say that Sakaryaspor could be an ‘error’ on the site, or it maybe isn't. They had three infractions, two of which were those ‘transactional’ ones, with one that stipulated a three-window ban. The two transactional ones have been lifted - the third one still remains published.

Unfortunately, I don't know what SI have historically used as their source - but we do know which clubs were configured with a ban in FM 24. So I could do a bit of cross-checking. However, once bans have completed, they no longer appear on the FIFA site - so I can't consult the history, as such.