The transfer market which opened this Friday in Europe will be one of the last without general regulation of football agents, whose opaque remuneration and excesses oblige the FIFA to tighten the screw.
Boosted by the liberalization of the transfer market since 1995, these intermediaries are involved in 20% of international transactions of players, and have shared nearly $ 500 million (407 million euros) in commissions this year, according to FIFA.
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Until the health crisis, this cake had continued to swell, with a doubling between 2015 and 2019 of the commissions identified by FIFA, while the solidarity payments and compensation to training clubs linked to transfers stagnated.
Agents can be hired by the player – a classic pattern in other sports or for artists’ agents – but also by the selling club, the buying club or all three at the same time, a mixture of genres illustrated by the Italo-Dutch agent Mino Raiola in the transfer of Paul Pogba from Juventus to Manchester United in 2016, triple commission of 49 million euros at stake.
An incentive to change club
Since FIFA abolished the agent’s license in 2015, only certain federations still control their skills and activity. In France, agents must pass an exam and their accounts can be submitted since 2017 to the DNCG, the financial policeman of football.
This lack of regulation has created ” a Wild West situation at the bottom of the ladder ”, with fierce competition between intermediaries, “And a high level of concentration in the most lucrative segments”, controlled by a handful of star agents, described in 2018 the International Center for the Study of Sport (CIES) in Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
At the root of the criticism is their remuneration, mainly indexed to the amount of transfers rather than the salaries of players, prompting them to push for a change of club.
“Officers exert excessive and often negative pressure on players, especially minors. Lack of skills, greed and bad advice jeopardize the careers of many talents ”, deplores the CIES.
In addition, their commissions are not capped and can be supported by the clubs, allowing European leaders to lock access to football nuggets by paying their agents handsomely.
Finally, both the CIES and FIFA have noted a cascade of criminal offenses permitted by the opacity of financial flows linked to transfers: corruption of sports leaders via retrocommissions, money laundering and massive tax evasion, highlighted by the revelations of “Football Leaks” and the investigations opened around the Portuguese Jorge Mendes, the agent of Cristiano Ronaldo.
The football body hopes to complete by summer 2021 a project started in 2018 and recreate an agent’s license, with initial examination, by barring access to any candidate already convicted of corruption, tax fraud, money laundering or abuse. sexual.
FIFA also intends to ban the “ triple representation “ player-club seller-club buyer, and pass transactions through a “Clearing house”.
Above all, it wants to cap commissions at 6% of the total amount of the salary contracted by the player, or at 10% of the transfer fee.
This last point promises a battle in European justice with the Football Agents Forum (FAF), chaired by Mino Raiola, on the basis of free competition.
“How is it possible to put a limit on talent? It would be like putting a limit on the prices of paintings by Leonardo da Vinci or Rembrandt », lamented on December 8 the powerful agent in the Italian newspaper Tuttosport.
For Swiss lawyer Philippe Renz, who has been scrapping since 2017 against FIFA, “Reform is a cloud of smoke” if it does not eliminate the “double representation” club-player, as the Belgian federation did for example in the summer of 2020.
FIFA, which is still in the consultation phase, has also not followed the recommendations of the CIES, which wanted to systematically index agent commissions on salaries and not on transfer allowances, to better fight “Against hyperspeculation on player mobility, contractual instability” and certain arrangements such as “third-party ownership” of players.
Former model and volleyball player, the self-taught Sonia Souid has established herself as a pioneer in the ultramascular world of round ball agents, drawing a trajectory “Atypical” between Gulf countries, women’s football and Clermont, her hometown, whose club brought her pride but also annoyances.
At 35, the ex-Miss Auvergne already has a solid CV in boys (signing Lucas Ocampos at OM for example) and girls, where she manages the career of Amandine Henry and several other internationals.
However, the career of an agent was not a natural destination for the one who was a volleyball player at VBC Riom, a hostess in events and business provider in luxury real estate. Until his father, a physical trainer, advised him to take the competition.
“She locked herself in a room for four months to study while eating (chewing gum) Malabar!” She barely went out to eat, it’s Sonia ”, laughs Samy, his little brother and now colleague.
The interested party said that she was ” managed alone “, with the Internet for only help. “I admit having ruined the company for which I worked, part time as a receptionist, in printing”, she smiles.
In 2010, with an agent’s license in hand, she cleared the untapped market in the Gulf countries, where her father was based. The first successes come two years later: Hamdan Al-Kamali (on loan to OL) becomes the first Emirati player to play in Ligue 1, Guy Lacombe settles on the bench of Al Wasl in Dubai.
At the same time, Souid is expanding his canvas in women’s football, by making the first paid transfer to women’s D1 with Marie-Laure Délie, from Montpellier to PSG. The attacker breathes her name to several players, including Amandine Henry.
Souid now co-directs the Football department of the CSM Sport & Entertainment agency chaired by Sebastian Coe, the current boss of the International Athletics Federation.
At the origin of the coming of Deacon to Clermont
Its detractors, on the other hand, portray a person «Vantarde» and that “Plays on the scarcity of the female sex in the profession”, recalling that she did not only make friends, especially in her hometown.
The story, however, had everything a fairy tale for the one who grew up in the modest district of Vergnes, opposite the Gabriel-Montpied stadium of Clermont Foot, a club with which she has often collaborated.
In 2014, she inspired President Claude Michy with the idea of appointing a female coach for a men’s team, a first that attracted media from around the world. Despite the rapid defection of the Portuguese Helena Costa, Corinne Deacon arrives.
“The advice to take a wife is her. On the other hand, the error of the person is it too. Me, I assumed the rest, I managed “Says the former leader who sold the Ligue 2 club in 2019 … through Souid.
This transaction of a few million euros, on which the agent received a 10% commission, left traces in the woman who believes she was left out of the negotiations.
Sometimes a victim of machismo
“These are years of work, a network to build”, takes offense to Souid, assuring that the amount of the sale, “I was the one who negotiated it”. The agreement required “Tens or even hundreds of hours of communication”, says Esteves.
More surprisingly, Michy conditions the payment of the commission to a confidentiality clause, Souid becoming persona non grata at the press conference formalizing the sale. ” It was nightmarish ”, she says.
The 71-year-old leader believes the agent’s job “Did not exist apart from making contact.” “Sonia Souid has a lot of charm, but she is a woman. They want to show qthey know how to do “, he judges.
These words bring back painful memories for Souid, convinced of having been the victim of machismo. “It hurt me in my flesh”, she says. Claude Michy, for his part, ensures that he has no personal conflict with her: “It’s business life, there was nothing dramatic. If I meet her again, I say hello to her. “
