Role of agents in modern day football

CAIRO – 18 June 2017: With all the talk that happens within each transfer window about football players leaving a certain club to join another, people tend to ignore the role of agents in deciding the move of the player.

In the past before the invasion of the agents; football players would stay for a long time at one club. We have players like Steven Gerrard, Javier Zanetti, Paolo Maldini, Francesco Totti, Raul and the list continues who remained loyal to the club they played for. They valued football more than anything. For them football was the priority and money would not dictate their decision.

However, since the invasion of agents like Mino Raiola and Jorges Mendes the beautiful game changed into a business game. Transfer records are broken every day; Ederson Santana de Moraes became worlds’ most expensive goalkeeper, the transfer of the youngster John Stones from Everton to City made him the most expensive defender, and Mathias Pogba became the world’s most expensive footballer. All this happened within two years, when it would have taken decades to break such records in the past.
Not only did the agents increase the prices of the market but they also now control the players’ minds. For example: Gianluigi Donnarumma who was seen kissing AC Milan’s badge multiple times last year has just announced a couple of days ago that he will not renew his contract with AC Milan. Eventually, The 18 year old said no to his club after being offered € 5 million ($5.5 million) a year.

Agents can be considered as the businessmen controlling the whole game of football; they now have the ability to buy a percentage of the contract or even buy a club.

Mendes, Cristiano Ronaldo’s agent, has his own club in Portugal, while Raiola usually buys parts of the players’ contracts. Raiola previously bought a part of Pogba’s contract at Juventus and earned about € 41 million out of Pogba’s transfer from Juventus to Manchester United.

Agents play a very important role in making football such an interesting game, however many of them choose to manipulate the players’ decisions just to make the highest profit .