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Fans pay for the agents in 'seriously corrupt' game
Denis Campbell
Sunday October 3, 2004
The Observer
If football clubs imposed a £3 levy on every ticket they sold in order to hand the cash directly to agents, fans would surely rebel. Yet Manchester United and others are already doing just that.
We know this because United, to their credit, last week betrayed one of the secrets of football's often murky finances by admitting they paid agents a total of £5.5 million during 2003-04. That whopping sum comprised commissions for bringing new players to Old Trafford, among them Cristiano Ronaldo and Gabriel Heinze, and payments for helping to keep others there.
Consider the figures. About 1.675 million spectators attended the 25 matches at Old Trafford last season. That works out at roughly £3 per punter per game ending up with the likes of Pini Zahavi and Paul Stretford.
United point out that matchday income accounts for only 36 per cent of their turnover, which would make the fans' contribution £1 per head per game. Either way, United's openness in announcing the payments has made agents one of the talking points of the past week.
The debate will go on following comments made to The Observer by a top agent yesterday. 'There is serious, serious corruption in football here,' said Colin Gordon, who represents top players in the Premiership and the Middlesbrough manager, Steve McClaren. The worst offences, he added, were in transfers from abroad.
'If you picked any 20 foreign transfers, you'd find that a large proportion of them would involve over-priced players and money that's gone missing. But who's going to stop that?
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'Football clubs and chairmen know who in the game is corrupt, so why do they still use them? I would question the motives of a large number of managers, chief executives and chairmen in the game.'
United have been criticised for forking out such large sums. Alan Smith's agent got £750,000 for arranging a straightforward £6m transfer that the player, the selling club and the buying club all wanted to happen. Rodger Linse, Ruud van Nistelrooy's representative, was paid £331,000 of the £1.2m he is due for negotiating an extension to the striker's contract.
On top of that £5.5m, last year United also agreed to pay £1.5m to Stretford, Wayne Rooney's agent, for bringing the player from Everton. That works out at £5,000 a week for the 312 weeks of the teenager's contract. However staggering United's figures and practices appear, consider the situation at Chelsea. After Roman Abramovich took over in July 2003, his friend Pini Zahavi, who is widely regarded as the world's best-connected, and richest, agent, played a key role in the series of big-name, big-money signings that followed. The Israeli, like Linse a former football journalist, pocketed somewhere between £5m and £10m for his work. At least £5m from one club in the same period that United forked out £5.5m to 10 agents representing 16 different players.
Chelsea do not reveal how much Zahavi was paid. The Fifa guideline is five per cent commission on transfer fees, and with Chelsea spending £100m it was at least £5m.
'I suspect it's into double figures [of millions],' says one club boss who has dealt with Zahavi in recent years. Another senior figure adds: 'Pini pulled in at least the thick end of £6m from Chelsea last year, and probably a bit more.'
Given the usual secrecy that surrounds agents and transfers, and the growing concern in the game about bungs, overseas bank accounts and the likelihood that some managers and chairmen, as well as some agents, are on the take, English football's three governing bodies are all taking steps to tackle what some perceive as widespread covert corruption.
The 72 Football League clubs have already published the first set of figures showing how much they paid in agents fees last year, and will do the same every season. Five weeks ago the 20 Premier League outfits agreed that their annual Directors' Reports will include details of payments to agents and third parties, and report to the league all deals in which more than £25,000 is paid to any agent.
The Football Association are drawing up some new regulations to help bolster the rules of Fifa, football's global authority, that supposedly govern agents' activities. The FA's moves are intended to ensure disclosure of both 'secondary payments' - the sums that end up with other agents or persons unknown who help to make a transfer happen - and relevant relationships between agents and managers, chairmen and chief executives. That should, for example, reveal how many managers hold shares in a football agency such as Proactive, and therefore stand to benefit financially by buying or selling a player - a clear potential conflict of interest.
But there is bad news. Even the FA admit privately that agents' activities and rewards are so hard to police that improvements may have little effect. They still rely on agents voluntarily disclosing information.
Gordon, whose clients include David James and Chris Kirkland, says: 'It's impossible to have a system that has full integrity or disclosure because, for instance, neither the FA nor the Inland Revenue can compel a foreign club to open its books to see where money they received from a club here ended up.'
Fifa show little interest in tackling excesses and broken rules, and have not disciplined any of the agents reported by the FA for misdemeanours.
United have introduced an overdue measure of transparency, but the serious action needed to regulate how agents operate is not on the horizon.
No wonder, then, that someone like Gordon concludes despairingly: 'Agents get a terrible name but the main problem isn't fees to agents, it's transfer fees. That's where the serious wrongdoing goes on.'
http://football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9753,1318478,00.html
Denis Campbell
Sunday October 3, 2004
The Observer
If football clubs imposed a £3 levy on every ticket they sold in order to hand the cash directly to agents, fans would surely rebel. Yet Manchester United and others are already doing just that.
We know this because United, to their credit, last week betrayed one of the secrets of football's often murky finances by admitting they paid agents a total of £5.5 million during 2003-04. That whopping sum comprised commissions for bringing new players to Old Trafford, among them Cristiano Ronaldo and Gabriel Heinze, and payments for helping to keep others there.
Consider the figures. About 1.675 million spectators attended the 25 matches at Old Trafford last season. That works out at roughly £3 per punter per game ending up with the likes of Pini Zahavi and Paul Stretford.
United point out that matchday income accounts for only 36 per cent of their turnover, which would make the fans' contribution £1 per head per game. Either way, United's openness in announcing the payments has made agents one of the talking points of the past week.
The debate will go on following comments made to The Observer by a top agent yesterday. 'There is serious, serious corruption in football here,' said Colin Gordon, who represents top players in the Premiership and the Middlesbrough manager, Steve McClaren. The worst offences, he added, were in transfers from abroad.
'If you picked any 20 foreign transfers, you'd find that a large proportion of them would involve over-priced players and money that's gone missing. But who's going to stop that?
Advertiser links
Club Football 2005 on PS2 XBox PC
The official PS2, Xbox and PC video game for Manchester Utd,...
codemasters.co.uk
Video Games: Football Games Deals
Video games: find football games at Kelkoo, the essential...
kelkoo.co.uk
Corporate Football Hospitality from £299
All Premership games including: Chelsea, Man United,...
hospitality-finder.co.uk
'Football clubs and chairmen know who in the game is corrupt, so why do they still use them? I would question the motives of a large number of managers, chief executives and chairmen in the game.'
United have been criticised for forking out such large sums. Alan Smith's agent got £750,000 for arranging a straightforward £6m transfer that the player, the selling club and the buying club all wanted to happen. Rodger Linse, Ruud van Nistelrooy's representative, was paid £331,000 of the £1.2m he is due for negotiating an extension to the striker's contract.
On top of that £5.5m, last year United also agreed to pay £1.5m to Stretford, Wayne Rooney's agent, for bringing the player from Everton. That works out at £5,000 a week for the 312 weeks of the teenager's contract. However staggering United's figures and practices appear, consider the situation at Chelsea. After Roman Abramovich took over in July 2003, his friend Pini Zahavi, who is widely regarded as the world's best-connected, and richest, agent, played a key role in the series of big-name, big-money signings that followed. The Israeli, like Linse a former football journalist, pocketed somewhere between £5m and £10m for his work. At least £5m from one club in the same period that United forked out £5.5m to 10 agents representing 16 different players.
Chelsea do not reveal how much Zahavi was paid. The Fifa guideline is five per cent commission on transfer fees, and with Chelsea spending £100m it was at least £5m.
'I suspect it's into double figures [of millions],' says one club boss who has dealt with Zahavi in recent years. Another senior figure adds: 'Pini pulled in at least the thick end of £6m from Chelsea last year, and probably a bit more.'
Given the usual secrecy that surrounds agents and transfers, and the growing concern in the game about bungs, overseas bank accounts and the likelihood that some managers and chairmen, as well as some agents, are on the take, English football's three governing bodies are all taking steps to tackle what some perceive as widespread covert corruption.
The 72 Football League clubs have already published the first set of figures showing how much they paid in agents fees last year, and will do the same every season. Five weeks ago the 20 Premier League outfits agreed that their annual Directors' Reports will include details of payments to agents and third parties, and report to the league all deals in which more than £25,000 is paid to any agent.
The Football Association are drawing up some new regulations to help bolster the rules of Fifa, football's global authority, that supposedly govern agents' activities. The FA's moves are intended to ensure disclosure of both 'secondary payments' - the sums that end up with other agents or persons unknown who help to make a transfer happen - and relevant relationships between agents and managers, chairmen and chief executives. That should, for example, reveal how many managers hold shares in a football agency such as Proactive, and therefore stand to benefit financially by buying or selling a player - a clear potential conflict of interest.
But there is bad news. Even the FA admit privately that agents' activities and rewards are so hard to police that improvements may have little effect. They still rely on agents voluntarily disclosing information.
Gordon, whose clients include David James and Chris Kirkland, says: 'It's impossible to have a system that has full integrity or disclosure because, for instance, neither the FA nor the Inland Revenue can compel a foreign club to open its books to see where money they received from a club here ended up.'
Fifa show little interest in tackling excesses and broken rules, and have not disciplined any of the agents reported by the FA for misdemeanours.
United have introduced an overdue measure of transparency, but the serious action needed to regulate how agents operate is not on the horizon.
No wonder, then, that someone like Gordon concludes despairingly: 'Agents get a terrible name but the main problem isn't fees to agents, it's transfer fees. That's where the serious wrongdoing goes on.'
http://football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9753,1318478,00.html