Agents, brokers and proxies bought: Andrea Di Caro’s comment

Questionable millionaire brokerages, privileged relationships between executives and always the same agents-brokers who also appear in businesses in which they have marginal roles. Requests for millionaire signing bonuses at the time of stipulating a contract or renewing it, increases on recently concluded contracts, threats to take the player away to zero in case of non-transfers. Percentage claims on deals already closed by the clubs “otherwise I won’t move the player”. And, for years now, also the (forbidden) purchase of millions of players’ sports proxies, to then move them from one club to another and earn through mediation and engagements…

Welcome to the ever more exasperated and unregulated world in which sports agents operate, with the complacency of managers (sometimes even presidents…) and players who share the large earnings with them through formulas that are sometimes totally irregular, others formally regular but totally fake. From the series: get rich who can. A Far West in which unscrupulous gunslingers have increased in recent years and there are few candid souls. No one is surprised. They are not rumors and mere hearsay. In football, everyone knows everything: managers, players, agents, mediators, blockheads… And if no one denounces it is only because it doesn’t suit them: the manger is rich and everyone takes turns feeding themselves. It’s not a question of lumping everything together or denying that there are also correct operators in their respective roles: for heaven’s sake, even those are not lacking. Those who move forward through their own “know how” exist. But even the clean ones know what is rotten, which they may not participate in but which they avoid reporting. What about sports institutions? In silence. And head in the sand. Without interceptions, to open an investigation or a file, someone’s complaint is needed. Stay cool… That of the repentant in football is a role that doesn’t exist. And even that of the great accuser is more unique than rare because whoever held him in the past then gambled away their career (Zeman docet).

It seems like a century has passed since the deans of the past like Canovi. Individual operators hardly exist anymore. They are called agencies, they have offices around the world (or boast about them), foreign names and often bring together several agents: they are real companies. But if the role of agents and mediators still makes sense when it comes to setting up business with foreign clubs, it suggests that in Italy club managers who have known each other for a lifetime and meet regularly in the League then need the mediator to close a deal…

Today the prosecutors have almost replaced the sporting directors: they are the ones who create the business between the clubs. Once upon a time it was the clubs that met for a purchase or sale and then the player’s signing with the agent was negotiated. Prehistory. Today it is the agent who moves his player and sets up the negotiation. In return, until this market session, he could have up to three comedy roles and as many sources of income: mediator for those who sell, mediator for those who buy, percentage on the player’s salary. The new Fifa 2023 regulation will reduce the roles that the same person can play to one or two. The old agent earned on the player’s salary: today he does it mainly on the operation. And here another scenario opens up: that of the purchase of powers of attorney. Grabbing the best players with the possibility of moving them means such a high possibility of income, that there are more and more those who, in order to guarantee the right power of attorney, offer an immediate gain to the player at the time of signing. Or maybe they give in to the requests of the players or their family members who demand a real engagement to be represented. This explains the increasingly frequent changes by the players of their agents. There is always someone who promises them something more. Or someone willing to please them.

The leeches are not always and only the agents, often also the players and their families: not only are there those who ask for money to be represented and to renew expired agreements, but also percentages on the mediations that the agents obtain and even the percentage on the percentage of the salary they have to pay to the agent. Tortures and potential offenses that also affect clubs. If an agency (which can stipulate an agreement for a maximum of two years) invests a lot in a player already under contract, it has only one way to recover his money: to move him and/or to multiply his salary. Otherwise you have lost your initial investment. Today a club may even have entered into a multi-year agreement with one of its athletes: if he changes his agent, there’s trouble… Why do some players who have excellent agents revoke them? Because they received a more advantageous offer and often with an immediate source of income. And everyone knows everything…