Bring back the fax machine.
It's the transfer that's dragged on all summer but when it finally came to the crunch it turned out that football (or at least football administration) is not the universal language.
Manchester United and Real Madrid - two of the the biggest club's on the planet - couldn't complete the transfer of David De Gea by the 11pm close of the Spanish transfer window because... wait for it... officials in Spain couldn't open the files that were sent from Old Trafford.
In fact they missed the deadline by a whole 60 seconds.
The word is that they will make a special appeal to the Spanish league administrators on Tuesday, presumably on the basis that they're all idiots and nobody knew how Google (other search engines are available) to figure out how to open the files.
No doubt the appeal will be successful - Real Madrid and Manchester United tend to hold a lot of sway when it comes to dealings with footballing admins - but at the moment the deal has not gone through and De Gea remains a Manchester United player.
And if he doesn't want to play for United, he could always go and work in Real's IT department. Sounds like they could use the help.
Unsurprisingly, the internet went into total meltdown when it emerged just why the transfer was off.
https://twitter.com/GuillemBalague/status/638473938306236418
https://twitter.com/English_AS/status/638484673560186880
https://twitter.com/GaffneyVLC/status/638484818595069952
https://twitter.com/GrantWahl/status/638486823073939461
https://twitter.com/MatthewStanger/status/638486927663099907
https://twitter.com/NickMiller79/status/638487209788731392
https://twitter.com/AlexShawESPN/status/638487254143528960
https://twitter.com/_Zeets/status/638487504916754432
https://twitter.com/conorheneghan1/status/638487515750617088
https://twitter.com/JimBoardman/status/638487969997918209
https://twitter.com/markchapman/status/638488161371471872
