The summer of 2023 made Premier League history, with a record £2.36bn spent by its combined 20 clubs. This year has been a very different story.
Chelsea are leading the way with £190m of the Premier League’s £1.35bn outlay coming from the Stamford Bridge coffers alone, but elsewhere notably fewer players are on the move due to a combination of financial restrictions, Euro 2024 and the knock-on effects of previous windows.
In the meantime, that has left a sea of football agents twiddling their thumbs. The FA recognises a total of 1,654 representatives who are licensed to operate in the English game, for whom the summer is traditionally their festive period.
That can lend itself to unscrupulous operatives bent on engineering deals regardless of players’ wishes, though that is changing. New Fifa regulations have sought to elevate the standards of the agency industry, and many within it are determined to change a culture that one agent, who declined to be named, admits is perceived to be full of “sharks”.
“A lot of players talk about that one agent who, in the worst cases, pops up twice a year to see if there’s a deal to be done,” talent manager Ben Mawson tells i.
“We really want to be there all year looking after them, in every possible way.”
Agents are often maligned, but the majority of professionals do depend on them to negotiate complex transfers on their behalf, ensure they are paid fairly, and handle off-field sponsorship and media deals.
That is especially true of the modern player.
Paul Dalglish, son of Liverpool legend Kenny, who cofounded management company TaP23, believes agents now have to have greater scope, rather than just negotiating transfers.
“It’s about supporting them on their on-field performance,” Dalglish, also a qualified coach, tells i.
“And being able to sit down with players before games and prepare for the game, post-game evaluation, also working with the clubs to make sure you’re not saying something contradictory.
“Because ultimately, what I think has been lost in football at times is the fact the club and the agent really have the same objective, which is to maximise the performance and the value of the player.
“There’s so much data in football now. When you’re negotiating against a club, they’re armed with experts and huge amounts of information and data, and if you don’t understand how to interpret that data you’re really going into a gun fight with a spoon.”
“The old phrase is that an agent is only as good as the players on the books,” another representative tells i.
That may be true when it comes to dealing with transfers, but there is good reason why so many players are grateful for a more holistic approach too. A recent report from sports charity Xpro claimed that 40 per cent of footballers face bankruptcy within five years of retiring.
Being an agent, Mawson points out, is about managing “a human being”, however talented they are.
“They all need to be looked after in different ways, making sure they can focus on football. It’s getting it right, doing the right things at the right time, not short-term cash grab deals that look terrible.”
The profiles of some players have thrived due to the explosion of social media within the game over the past decade, while other agents are adamant their clients need protecting.
Players are now treated in the same category of celebrity as singers and actors, which marks a significant shift in the landscape 20 years ago, says Dalglish.
“We think now of the explosion of the popularity of football,” he adds.
“There was a song about Thiago Silva, footballers are walking the cat walk.
“[In the past] boutique fashion brands would never go near footballers, singers would want to distance themselves from football.
“Now with the explosion of social media over the last 10 years, you’ve got to treat footballers as public figures.”
This summer, for many agents, has felt like a new frontier in other ways. During the Olympics and European Championship, highly sellable players have been unreachable, which has disrupted the market.
However, the game has changed too due to vigorous new agent exams enforced by Fifa. The format is a 20-question test, lasting an hour, with students able to consult a 560-age textbook.
And player sales have been further complicated in the Premier League by Profitability and Sustainability Regulations (PSR). Some clubs simply don’t have the headroom to do business, and while some need to keep academy players to meet homegrown quotas, others are desperate to shift domestic talent – as has happened with Conor Gallagher at Chelsea – because they represent pure profit.
“Cole Palmer going to Chelsea [last summer], that was a big chunk of money that Manchester City could use to offset their expenses and comply with Financial Fair Play,” Dalglish adds.
“If you bring someone in from the outside, you’re probably going to acquire them for a fee and then they’ve got to turn a profit.
“You need a certain amount of domestic players in your squad. That’s why you understand that as an agency, there has been a bit of a premium on young domestic players.”
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/2nGjw5z
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