Well, that didn’t take long. Less than a month ago, Mauricio Macri, the former president of Boca Juniors and mayor of Buenos Aires, was elected Argentina’s new president. Today, the country is dropping its currency controls. Buyers of Argentine players should take note.

Macri follows Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, whose administration was, among other things, an enormous machine for creating and then denying the existence of inflation. Prices rising at 20-30% annually would normally send a currency cratering, but Fernández used billions in foreign reserves to prop up the peso while curtailing her compatriots’ ability to exchange it for dollars and other stronger monies. These measures allowed her to maintain – at least for naive observers – the illusion of low inflation. On official markets, the peso was artificially strong, but a huge black market emerged where it traded at much lower rates.

Those days are over now. The peso is a free-floating currency again, and Argentines can buy and sell pesos at will. Logically, the peso can be expected to drop to a level in between the old official and black market rates. And this is where the opportunity for buyers may arise.

With a lower peso, Argentine players may be available at slightly lower prices in terms of dollars, euros, and other foreign currencies. In early trading, the peso was down roughly 30% as the market got to grips with the new regime. But let’s say the peso eventually settles 15% lower versus the dollar. If prices in Argentina don’t immediately rise, then a dollar will buy 15% more stuff in Argentina. So if a club was asking $1 million for a player when $1 million was worth 10 million pesos, after the currency depreciation it might be willing to accept, say, $900,000 dollars, which would be worth 10.35 million pesos.

Of course, the reality is likely to be somewhere in between. Prices for many goods and services do rise in response to dips in the exchange rate. But the more the peso drops, the more likely it is that there will be some room to bargain.

The question is how long this drop will last. Macri has insisted that the peso will not plunge for long, because foreign investors will flood into Argentina – buying pesos all along – as his administration remakes the economy. The January transfer window in Europe (and the February one in the United States) are just around the corner, though. There may still be time to look for bargains.

As always, caveats apply when buying players straight from Argentina. The league has been hollowed out in recent years by the rapid exit of young talent, so the level isn’t what it once was. Also, Argentine culture emphasizes family and close friendships, so moving a continent away can be a challenging adjustment. But players going straight to Spain, Italy, and – interestingly – the United States have had great success of late. We’ll see if more of them make the trip early next year.

More generally, today’s news is a reminder that exchange rates and global financial conditions merit the attention of clubs in the transfer market. Rates are changing all the time, and a fluctuation of as little as 5% on a $10 million transfer could save enough money to buy another good player.