A transfer is two negotiations that are usually reported as one.
The clubs argue about the fee. The player argues about everything else. The second conversation is called personal terms, and it is the one that more often ends a transfer.
What is actually in them
Wages are the headline and roughly half the substance.
Basic salary, usually quoted gross per week in England and annually almost everywhere else, which is one reason cross-border comparisons are useless.
Contract length, which is not a detail. It sets how long the player is secure, how long the club controls the registration, and, since the five-year amortisation cap, no longer reduces the club's annual accounting charge beyond five years.
Signing-on fee, paid for agreeing to join, normally in instalments across the contract.
Bonuses. Appearance, goal, assist, clean sheet and team-achievement bonuses. A striker's bonus schedule can be worth a substantial fraction of the basic.
Image rights. How the club may use the player's likeness, and what share of commercial income he receives. Frequently structured through a separate company and a separate agreement, and a recurring subject of tax disputes.
Release or buy-out clause. A figure at which the club must permit a sale. Compulsory in Spain, negotiated elsewhere, and often the single most consequential line in the document.
Protections. Loyalty payments, and increasingly clauses that adjust the salary if the club is relegated or fails to qualify for Europe.
Why they are agreed first
This looks backwards and is not.
A club will not commit a nine-figure fee to a selling club before knowing the player will actually sign. So the buying club settles what the player wants first, then goes to negotiate the fee, holding a personal agreement it can rely on.
Which produces the summer's most familiar sentence: personal terms are agreed, the clubs remain apart on valuation. It means the player is willing and the clubs are not, and it is the normal order of events rather than a sign of chaos.
It also sits awkwardly against the rules on approaching contracted players, since agreeing personal terms with somebody else's player requires having spoken to him. That tension is covered in this archive's page on tapping up.
Why deals die here
Three ways, in order of how often they happen.
The wage structure. A club that pays its best players £200,000 a week cannot pay a new signing £300,000 without renegotiating half the dressing room by Christmas. Clubs refuse over this constantly, and it is usually presented publicly as something else.
The release clause. A player wants one, to guarantee an exit route. The club refuses, because it converts an asset into a priced option held by somebody else. Deals stall here for weeks.
Length. A 30-year-old wants four years, the club offers two plus an option. Both positions are rational and neither side is being difficult.
What it looks like from outside
Two live examples from this window.
Lewis Hall never reached personal terms with Manchester United, because Newcastle United refused at the club level: an approach was rejected and Newcastle's head coach Matthias Jaissle answered the question in public with "No chance! No chance!", per Goal and football365. Personal terms are irrelevant when the selling club will not sell.
Alejandro Balde is the other shape. Fabrizio Romano has reported that Manchester United are in a conversation with Barcelona and that Barcelona are open to selling in case of a good proposal, while also saying the player is not pushing to leave, per football365. If that reporting holds, this is a deal where the clubs might agree and the personal side is the obstacle, which is the reverse of the usual failure.
The one-line version
The fee is what the clubs argue about. Personal terms are what the player argues about, they are usually settled first, and they are where more transfers die.
Sources: Goal and football365, 23 and 24 August 2026, on Matthias Jaissle's answer regarding Lewis Hall and on Fabrizio Romano's reporting of the Alejandro Balde position; Sky Sports, on the five-year amortisation cap, as covered in this archive's amortisation explainer.