Loan (sports)

In sports, a loan involves a particular player being allowed to temporarily play for a club other than the one he is currently contracted to. Loan deals may last from a few weeks to all season-long and can also be for a few seasons.

Players may be loaned out to other clubs for several reasons. Most commonly, young players will be loaned to a club in a lower league in order to gain valuable first team experience. In this instance, the parent club will continue to pay the player's wages in full. Some clubs put a formal arrangement in place with a feeder club for this purpose, such as Manchester United and Royal Antwerp, Arsenal and Beveren, or Chelsea and Vitesse. In other leagues such as Italy's Serie A, some smaller clubs have a reputation as a "farm club" and regularly take players, especially younger players, on loan from larger clubs.