ALL ABOARD THE AGENTS’ GRAVY TRAIN... IT’S UTTERLY OBSCENE
WHETHER or not you think the £1.9billion that Premier League clubs spent in the transfer window is obscene, one thing is for sure.
The £190million earned from those deals by agents is indisputably obscene.
That is £190m sucked out of the game.
The figure is a very, very educated guess – FIFA have released a snapshot report of international transfer activity which says agents’ fees have come in at an average of 9.9 per cent across all the deals.
That would mean, for example, Antony’s (right) agent Junior Pedroso could have pocketed around £8m from the Brazilian’s move to Old Trafford.
Another agency is claiming to have been involved in that move... and no wonder.
The FIFA report says agents earned an average of 6.1 per cent from a transfer 10 years ago, but that figure has now risen to that 9.9 per cent. The days of the Mister (and Mrs or Ms or Miss) Ten Percent are back.
Yet, for years, we have been hearing how FIFA have been trying to reduce the influence of agents, particularly in a financial sense.
Only last year, it was announced that agents would not be able to represent a player and a club in the same deal.
Infamously, the late Mino Raiola represented all three parties in the deal that took Paul Pogba from Juventus to Manchester United and was reported to have made £41m from the transfer.
And there are regulations about agents only being able to take three per cent of a player’s salary. Fees for transfers are capped at 10 per cent.
But that means they are still coining it in. According to FIFA, the total value of male player transfers in the summer was £4.36bn.
And, on top of that £4.36bn figure, agents and representatives were paid £430.8m. Does it really matter if agents are paid gargantuan fees? After all, if the clubs feel they have to pay up to get the best talent, so be it.
But the point is that it is eventually the supporters who will have to fund the agents.
Clubs pay them and then get the money back from the fans, whether through tickets and merchandise, through TV subscriptions, through whatever. And the gravy train for agents is showing no signs of being affected by the worldwide economic crisis – particularly on these shores.
The Antony transfer was a record for a final-day deal.
English football’s £1.9bn spend in the summer transfer window is also a record and contributed towards a huge increase in the value of all international activity.
The total male transfer window value from this summer of £4.36bn represented an increase of 29.7 per cent on the previous year’s figure.
And all this amid a global cost-of-living emergency.
But, to some extent, the transfer fees are just big clubs circulating money among themselves.
There is not much circulation from the agents. They just trouser the millions and then move on to the next deal.
Now that is what you can safely call obscene.