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KEIR RADNEDGE: AGENTS CREATING A STIR IN FOOTBALL'S ALPHABET SOUP

4:54pm Thursday, 4th March 2010

Agents are an issue. David Gill said so this week and he should know, as chief executive of Manchester United. FIFA also says so. This is why it is rolling out its web-based Transfer Matching System which will render the discredited licensing system redundant.

Also, perhaps surprisingly, some agents think agents are an issue. The good guys are growing increasingly irritated that the bad guys are giving them all a bad name.

This week, anyone in the football industry might have caught mention of the European Football Agents Association and wondered about this latest addition to football's alphabet soup.

FIFA watches everything from its massive steel and glass environmentally-friendly super-bunker in Zurich; UEFA runs Europe's competitions and distribute the largesse; EPFL talks for the leagues; ECA represents the significant clubs; FIFpro the players . . . and now EFAA is claiming the right to do so for agents.

Of course, agents claim they have the sort of public reputation which drags them along at a level inhabited by estate agents and members of parliament; a sort of necessary evil in a free society.

EFAA wants to change all that, insists its Dutch leader Rob Jansen. He comes at the challenge with some pedigree as the son of a professional footballer (Karel Jansen) who was the founder of the Dutch players' union and one of the founders of FIFpro.

This is not the first attempt to launch, maintain and extend the influence and remit of such an organisation.

Agents were once restricted to enabling the occasional commercial deals which came the way of only the footballing elite. But the expansion of the international market plus the television-and-sponsorship model prompted a megabucks explosion off the pitch.

In time the top agents became well known in their own right and it suited their own image value for their heads to appear above the publicity parapet. The names are well known from the likes of Dennis Roach to Pini Zahavi.

The likes of Jon Holmes (Gary Lineker) and Tony Stephens (David Platt, Alan Shearer) extended the rule beyond 'mere' transfers and into commercial realms.

Meanwhile FIFA tried to corral the agent explosion by launching a licensing system and Roach worked from the other direction by creating the International Association of Football Agents.

Now Jansen is trying to find another route, using the pyramid system which FIFA and UEFA understand: EFAA being the sum of an increasing number of national associations of agents.

Jansen says: 'It's become more and more obvious from the increasing number of conflicts between managers and players and directors and agents that the system does not function any more in the best interests of anybody.'

'FIFA says that only 30 per cent of transfers are managed by agents. That the rest are done between lawyers and accountants and family members. Do they really think there are no agents standing behind them?'

'So we want to talk to the governing bodies of the game. I am hopeful they will see we are sensible people who also have the best interests of the game at heart. Actually, they may also be surprised because we want more regulations than they ever proposed. We have nothing to fear. This is a commercial business. It should be properly controlled.'

Indeed.

Keir Radnedge is one of the foremost observers of international soccer. He has reported at every World Cup since 1966 and is a regular contributor to TV, radio, newspapers and magazines worldwide. He is London-based Editor of SportsFeatures.com and is chairman of the Football Commission of the International Sports Press Association (AIPS).