The Business of Football Agents
A football agent is someone who finds and negotiates employment and endorsement arrangements for their athlete in exchange for a fee. In exchange, football agents often get a fee of 5% of the deal, however, this percentage varies amongst agents. Some football agents work for huge corporations, while others run their own firms.
The Role of Football Agents
Successful football agents understand how to recognize talent, maintain relationships to establish strong networks, grasp existing legal rules, and are financially aware. In other words, they have a comprehensive knowledge of the sector.
Current and aspiring football agents need to level up now more than ever to stay competitive, especially with FIFA's new intermediary restrictions slated to take effect later this year.
The Underestimated Importance of Football Agents
For some, the jobs of agents have grown increasingly vital to football and the value of their relevance helps to make the sport the billion-dollar enterprise it is around the world today.
Others view agents as needless commodities that drain millions of dollars from the game each year at the expense of the sport, which relies on them to keep the system running smoothly.
In most cases, a connection between an agency and a client begins when the footballer's career begins. In all off-the-field situations, the agent replaces any parents, coaches, or guardians as the player's official representation.
This implies that, depending on the player's career, agents oversee their sponsorships, contracts, and public relations, as well as handle any transfers and select how a player spends any surplus funds they may make, among a long list of tasks.
Applying basic common sense, it is clear that the more successful the player is, the more valuable he is as a client to the agency.
So How Do Agents Earn Their Wages?
Agents are entitled to a commission on any type of profits, endorsements, or contract negotiations, and their firm can become incredibly wealthy depending on their ability to choose a skilled and capable athlete to represent.
This is why they are both envied and reviled by many in the football world, since they may make millions of pounds after just one day's work, depending on what happens to their player on the field.
Transfers including Robinho, Dimitar Berbatov, Wayne Rooney, and Carlos Tevez resulted in large commissions for agents, although this was mostly ignored by the media and fans.
When overinflated and unrealistic transfer prices that fail to provide a breakdown of where the money is going fail to raise any suspicions, it is a strong sign that something is wrong with the way football agents and clubs do their business.
Agents are frequently thrust into the spotlight during high-profile transfer sagas such as the Carlos Tevez saga, in which agent Kia Joorabchian was at the center of a complicated arm wrestle between West Ham and his agency before he brokered a deal for the Argentinian's transfer to Manchester United.
Take, for example, the world's most infamous football agent, Pini Zahavi, who was the business genius behind the transfers of Manchester United's Rio Ferdinand, Yakubu Aiyegbeni, and Juan Sebastian Veron, which totaled £65.5 million.
If you were receiving a sizable commission from that number, it would be reasonable to conclude you had a lavish lifestyle. But at what price and for what purpose?
For boosting player values and expanding a transfer market that suffocates small teams' financial capabilities? The problem is that people will remain dubious of these agents until their positions and every activity are revealed to the public.
However, it is critical to recognize that without them, a huge portion of football, and any other sport for that matter, would be mayhem.
It would be naive to believe that all football agents are honest, thus concerns must be asked about other lesser leagues throughout the world that do not have a public spotlight on every transfer transaction.
Without agents, though, football would be a shambles of shady transactions and shady techniques where fraud would be prevalent. Agents act and fulfill their tasks under the supervision of FIFA and any other relevant authorities. Without the rigorous infrastructure they use, players and the market they operate in would be tremendously vulnerable.
The capacity of football agents to understand their market and act appropriately gives them influence. They assist elite players all around the world in earning the high salaries they command while also ensuring that their emphasis remains fully on playing football rather than worrying about sponsorship agreements or the technicalities of a club contract.
They may have detractors, but on a daily basis, these faceless individuals undertake sophisticated and critical activities that keep the game operating smoothly on the surface. This is the nature of football agents' tremendous importance.
By Abiodun Apoeso.