For years, young footballers, mainly African, have been tricked by unscrupulous agents who promise them a career in the paradise of European football and are left to fend for themselves when the clubs they were recruited for reject their incorporation. Images of fifteen-year-olds sleeping under the roofs of European stadiums or begging in the streets in a desperate attempt to return home are common. It is not a majority practice of soccer representatives, but the new legislation will exclude from the system those who incur in them. FIFA has decided to intervene with the approval of a regulation that professionalizes management and suffocates abusive practices. The new regulations will exclude from the system those who incur in them and have been sentenced to at least 12 months in prison for matters related to organized crime, drug trafficking, corruption, money laundering, tax evasion, sexual abuse, exploitation or child trafficking. .
Intermediaries, commission agents and soccer agents are today under the scrutiny of the international organization. In a business in which the concealment of capital is not uncommon, FIFA aspires to make public the amounts paid for transfers and reveal which clubs and agents are involved in them, to stop the diversion of large sums of money to tax havens .
The working group has been able to verify that in numerous operations the agent came to represent the three parties involved: the selling club, the footballer and the destination club. That is over. FIFA intends to control the payments, being this organism the one that distributes them and transfers them to the country of residence of the representatives. A newly created body, called the Clearing House, will be in charge of controlling and distributing the commissions.
Forbes magazine published in 2019 the income of the most important sports agents: Jonattan Barnett: representative of Gareth Bale, 114 million euros; Jorge Mendes: representative of Cristiano Ronaldo, 105.8 million; Mino Raiola (now deceased): representative of Ibrahimovic, Pogba, Lukaku and Balotelli, 63 million; and Volker Struth: representative of Toni Kroos, 39.2 million. Complaints from soccer players have multiplied, reporting how their representatives take amounts four times higher than what they received as a transfer bonus.
The strategy is a business model with abusive clauses, based on influence peddling, and supported by the systematic relocation of players by the different European leagues. The company Gestfute, owned by Jorge Mendes, is a clear example. His “managed” Felipe Augusto materialized the interest of five teams before he turned 25: CA Bragantino, Coimbra EC, Corinthians, Porto and Atlético de Madrid. It is part of the “hard core” of the Portuguese, and of a model that is based on the player’s transformation into a consumer product, which must rotate quickly from club to club, chained to the need for financial profitability of his agent. In 2021, commissions from football agents amounted to €450 million.
The regulation of the market will also make it possible to stop the leonine contracts that have been happening in the emerging business of women’s football. Both the Council and the European Parliament have already given their approval to the new players’ agent regulations presented by FIFA.
It is already known that the time of the towns passes more slowly. The soccer one too.
