Football agents are a necessary evil in the transfer window, but they can cause problems
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Football agents can groom players and look out for their own interests,
but they are necessary in the transfer window chaos, writes The Secret
Player
With the 2013 transfer window proving to be one of the most dramatic since its inception in 2002, the Secret Player's tales of transfer woes and dodgy football agent dealings are an inside look into the effects it has on club, player and family...
So I’m prepared for what might be ahead, but I’m also realistic and reasonably relaxed. You don’t go from playing thirty-five games for a Premier League club in one season to playing in the Unibond the next. My agent is totally cool about the situation, advising me not to worry, that there will be plenty of demand for me. There’s a nagging voice chipping away inside my head that I could be without a club, but he knows his stuff.
We have a couple of months before football stops in June, when nothing happens as everyone disappears on holiday. I once moved between clubs and had to get the two chairmen to speak to each other. One was in Australia, the other Barbados. I fixed it for them to speak for the one time of the day when they would both be awake.
Maybe you think an agent should do that, but players should get involved to maximise their chances. But not to do an Odemwingie, driving down to their prospective club, burning bridges and making themselves look too desperate. Maybe the club will accept a deal from another club and get us to agree terms, that’s just as likely as transfers come about in several ways.
I’ve not got an exclusive contract with my agent. That is, he doesn’t have a signed mandate to represent me and for nobody else to represent me. He would rather that he did have that, but what if I do a deal myself? What if a former manager calls and makes a verbal offer which I’m happy with? Does my agent really need 5% of that when I’ve done the deal?
I’m even prepared to ring a few other agents whom I know are close to big-name managers. I won’t tell my agent this. If he brings me a deal then the business is his, but if he doesn’t I’m open to other options.
So I work the phones, sounding out these other agents. They want the business and, as I am an established Premier League property, they are naturally interested and tell me that they will inform the managers. They also ask what I’m looking for money-wise. I’m getting on as many radars as possible and I see no shame in this, every player in football will be out of contract at some point.
I’ve also been in the situation before. I know about the transfer merry-go-round and how it works, with players getting sounded out by coaches and managers. Football’s own chain and, like housing chains, such deals are prone to collapse if one move falls through.
One of my projected moves collapsed partly because of my own actions. A few things happened in a short space of time over which I had little control. I was about to sign for a biggish club and was driving there to put pen to paper. Then my phone went off – an emergency call from my agent, who was travelling down in a separate car – ordering me to turn around immediately as my prospective manager was about to be sacked.
I’d driven three hours and was within five minutes of the motorway turn-off so I just carried on and drove into the club car park. I don’t think anyone spotted me as I pulled up and looked at the club sign outside the main stand. An hour earlier, I had been preparing mentally to represent the team in the sign. My wife was starting to get the idea into her head which would end up with her moving our family 150 miles away. But one dismissal and that was that. I turned around and drove home.
Football can be a shit industry much of the time, but I’ve been a shit myself. A few weeks later, I made a verbal agreement to join a great old club. Their manager seemed to be going places and I was impressed by him. A medical was arranged, a date set and the word was out among the media close to their club that I was signing.
But then I had a better offer from a club in the same division closer to my house. I would be working for a manager I knew well. I spoke to my wife about it and it was obvious which was the better option for me and our family. I tried to do the decent thing (and the wise one, given that football is a small world) and rang the boss of the club I had a verbal agreement with to apologise and tell him that I wouldn’t be joining his club as I’d had a better offer for me and my family. Which was true.
He went absolutely fucking mad and ranted down the phone for a minute, before telling me that he was going to send the invoice for the medical to my home address (he never did) and finishing off with ‘I don’t want arseholes like you near my club.’
We played against his team three games into the season and I thought: ‘This could be tasty.’ But the boss I’d let down merely blanked me. We won 2–1.
I trust my agent. Well, mostly. I’d hate to hear that he’s been asking too much money for me, but he assures me that he’s not. I know other players who’ve been priced out of deals because of greedy agents.
Ask any footballer about agents and they’re likely to have a less than complimentary story.
Agents manipulate players, especially young ones. They groom them. Agents begin by ingratiating themselves with players, stroking their egos, promising to look after them like their own children. Agents are salesmen, often with a good business sense, and footballers are their products.
I can see why they exist, but this unregulated, potentially highly lucrative industry attracts all kinds of sharks. Every agent is supposed to be FA and FIFA registered, but that means little. That’s just an exam which anyone with half a brain can pass. And some of the most powerful agents in football are not properly registered. They can’t call themselves agents, more ‘business advisors’, but they are the ones who cut the massive deals.
There are too many agents and not enough of any level of deals to go around. Agents are in it for one thing: themselves. There are some good agents, the ones who have hundreds of contacts, influential contacts. Certain clubs pay agents more than other clubs, so agents favour them and try to propel you towards them, but they are prepared to do you over to keep those clubs sweet.
I had an agent looking after me for a while. I no longer speak to him. He shafted me. He pushed financial advice and products on me that I should never have signed up to, where he cut himself in generously on the commissions.
I strongly suspect – though I can’t prove – that he said to one club: ‘If I can get him to sign for £15,000 a week, can I get £200,000?’ He knew that the club were prepared to pay £20,000 a week for me, but also that I would sign for £15,000. He saved them money and lined his own pockets. It leaves a very bitter taste. I’ve seen double charging added to that, where an agent concludes a deal and then goes to the player and claims that the club didn’t pay him.
A good agent should be an excellent negotiator who is optimistic about his clients. He should have his clients punching above their weight, both in terms of their stature and their wages. He should give hard, no-nonsense advice and keep a player grounded. If he has a player at Sunderland who thinks he’s good enough for Arsenal or Tottenham but isn’t, then the agent needs to tell him this.
He needs to be like a social worker and speak to his client when he’s playing badly, not just when he’s doing well and attracting attention.
He needs to be there for his player, offering emotional support and dealing with a player who wants to know why he’s not playing, answering questions about why the manager/fans/teammates don’t like him, rather than not picking up his calls.
He should have solid contacts and represent good players. If you’re a young player and an agent approaches you and says that he also represents Steven Gerrard, then you’ll listen to him. If he has no other players then you’ll be less inclined to do so. Agents can build up a portfolio with just one big-name player to attract others – and their big-name player will be the one who keeps their agency going. There’s a black agent in London with thirty black players on his books – those lads know they can trust him.
Agents manipulate players but players can also manipulate agents. An agent may approach a player to whom he’s not contracted and say that he has a club which is interested in him. They won’t be, but the player might raise his eyebrows and feel flattered. But he’ll then go to that club and say that the player is interested in joining them.
Some players tell agents to bring offers to them and they’ll take it from there before agreeing to sign with them, but agents naturally don’t want that.
Despite attempts to sort things out, the system is flawed, with all sorts of chancers trying to cut-in on deals. Clubs use their preferred agents too. One of my former teammates got a big-money move to a top club. He’d used the same agent for years, a reliable fella who negotiated him a decent boot contract and several nice commercial deals.
The buying club told him that they only went through a certain agent – who is widely viewed as a crook throughout football. The agent got a call from the crook, saying that he had to cut him in on the deal or there would be no deal. The agent cut him in, there was enough money in the pot for two. Or three, given that the team’s manager was almost certainly in on it – that’s why the crook got the call in the first place. Everyone wants a piece of the pie.
However, I’m not one of those who believe that players can do without agents. Clubs take the piss without them; they did for decades. They’ll pay players as little as possible, especially home-grown ones. It’s true that footballers go where the money is 90% of the time, but a player should be advised where to go.
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