masterproof about player agents

Player agents And their role in the world of professional football 1-12-2011 Alfrink College Tim van Dam (V24) and Gayan Teubel (V113) Mr. Schoenmaker


In what way are professional sports agents still important to professional football nowadays?

Background information What is a sports agent? What are his functions? What qualities are ought to be necessary? The history of sports agents When did they begin to exist? Why did they begin to exist? How has the way in which sports agents operate changed over the years? How can an agency contribute to a sports agent? The role of sports agents nowadays How are players approached? What is the view on sports agents nowadays? What is happening with youth football players nowadays? The financial part of sports agency How do sports agents make a living? What do clubs pay a year to sports agents?


Table of Contents Foreword ................................................................................................................................................. 5

Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 6

Chapter 2: Material and Method ............................................................................................................ 7

Chapter 3: Research Results .................................................................................................................... 9

3.1 Background information ................................................................................................................ 9

3.2. The history of sports agents ....................................................................................................... 13

3.3 The role of sports agents nowadays ...................................................................................... 18

3.4 The financial part of sports agency ....................................................................................... 22

Chapter 4: Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 27

Chapter 5: Afterword ............................................................................................................................ 28

Chapter 6: Summary .............................................................................................................................. 29

Sourcelist ............................................................................................................................................... 30

Appendix 1 – Survey Results ................................................................................................................. 31

Appendix 2 – Interview Roberto Branco Martins .................................................................................. 34

Appendix 3 – Interview James Herst ..................................................................................................... 40

Appendix 4 – Interview Jan de Visser .................................................................................................... 43

Appendix 5 – Interview Chris Rog ......................................................................................................... 49

Appendix 6 – Interview Chris Tolman ................................................................................................... 51

Appendix 7 – Interview Richard Thannhauser ...................................................................................... 53

Appendix 8 - Interview Mischa Rook ..................................................................................................... 54

Appendix 9 - Interview Tom Knipping ................................................................................................... 58

Appendix 10 - Article in the Mirror Football ......................................................................................... 69


Foreword We enormously enjoyed working on our master proof, because we both are interested in the subject and wanted to know more about the subject. We were, however, astonished by the amount of work it took. We both are enriched with a new experience. The interviews were on one side very exciting, whilst people with quite a reputation were willing to give an interview. On the other hand, we enjoyed taking these interviews. The results and conclusions that we could draw after this research were quite stunning to us, we had some results that were not like we expected. We have experienced that prejudice is a very bad thing, because we started this research with the idea that we would explore the mysterious and dark world of sports agents and after the research we said to ourselves that this isn’t a dark or mysterious world at all, except for some issues. Even funnier, we are now both slightly thinking of becoming a sports agent! We would like to thank the following people, who helped a lot in our research. We could not have done it without them. - Roberto Branco Martins (ProAgent), who was willing to give detailed and interesting answers in our interview, which pushed us into the right direction. Also, he did this in his spare time, which he doesn’t have a lot. - James Herst (Player agent), he really tried his best to answer all our questions and did this with great accuracy. He is often abroad but did manage to find a gap in his agenda. Great! - Jan de Visser (SP International), who was so kind to give a 35-minute interview and helped us to finalize our research. He gave extremely detailed answers and did not look for the shortest and easiest answer at all. - Hannie Zwijgers (Secretary SP International), who helped us to arrange an interview and who put a lot of effort and time in achieving this. Without her, we would not have had an interview with Jan de Visser. - Chris Rog (ADO Den Haag), who did his best on answering our questions in an elaborate way and he did this in his spare time. - Chris Tolman (Sparta Rotterdam), who was kind enough to sit down and take some time for us, he gave us everything he knew. - Richard Thannhauser (Go Ahead Eagles), who allowed us to clarify our topic from another perspective and who responded extremely quickly. -Mischa Rook (FC Oss), who helped us clarify the topic thoroughly from the perspective of the professional football clubs. -Tom Knipping (Voetbal International), who drove our research into a whole new direction. He provided us with certain information which was of vital importance. Because of this information, we could write a whole new, more balanced, conclusion. - Ulysse Ellian (University Amsterdam), who provided us with one of the few written sources that do exist about sports agents, namely the university script. - Pim Schoenmaker (Guide), who helped us brainstorm about this topic and gave us great ideas to

take this master proof to a higher level.

All in all, we have enjoyed making this master proof. We learned a lot about sports agents

and the world of football, but we also learned other important things. We have learned about

cooperating and exploiting our qualities to the fullest extent. We have learned about perseverance;

you must never give up. We have never given up getting an interview with a sports agent, even after

being cancelled a lot of times. Also communication plays a big role in making this master proof. Not

only with your partner, but also with secretaries, official organisations or when making agreements.


Chapter 1: Introduction We decided to do a master proof upon the importance of player agents in the professional world of football, because we are both extremely interested in football and there is a lot of commotion around player agents nowadays. Many people openly question the importance of the player agents and we started to wonder whether they indeed are of no importance to the world of football nowadays. Which has therefore become our main question. We believe that our cooperation was extremely good. We were both, due to our interest in the subject, extremely motivated to deliver a good paper. We worked hard, especially in the weeks we got from school, but also spend a lot of spare time in it. There was, of course, a break in our time spent, due to the summer holiday in which we both delayed our work for a few weeks. Our hypothesis was as follows: Player agents are still important to a player in order to keep focus at playing football instead of worrying about other business related issues. We had set up a plan of approach:

1. Formulate main questions and sub questions. 2. Start contacting people for interviews, where player agents have the highest importance. 3. Process the interviews. 4. Look up useful sources which contribute to our questions. 5. Process information and start writing the chapters. 6. Set up a web-based survey. 7. Process survey results. 8. Finish up chapters. 9. Finish up master proof.


Chapter 2: Material and Method

Due to the fact that we have such a specific subject which is not easily researched, we based all our information on internet facts and on interviews. There were barely written sources available, so we knew that we needed a lot of information from interviews. We decided to stick as much as possible to the plan of approach, so we started with formulating the main questions and the corresponding sub questions. For our information, we decided we wanted to research the subject from different actors, namely the national bond, the KNVB, professional football clubs, professional (ex)-football player, youth player and a player agent. We had high ambitions and decided to aim for the clubs with the reputations, though taken into consideration the possible distance we should have to travel for an interview. So, we first tried to contact Feyenoord Rotterdam, Ajax Amsterdam, AZ Alkmaar, ADO Den Haag, FC Utrecht, Sparta Rotterdam and Excelsior Rotterdam. All of the clubs either did not react or reacted negatively. Quite quickly thereafter, we found an overview of all licensed player agents working in the Netherlands. Taking into consideration the distance we might travel for an interview, and the reputation of the player agents and their agencies, we made up a list. Underneath could be found the top 10. We expected to arrange an interview with R. Jansen, because the father of Tim van Dam used to play with him together in a football team. That is also why he was our number one on the list. Unfortunately, we got a negative response from his agency. In fact, besides SP International, all agencies responded negatively, unfortunately. SP International promised to arrange an interview with R. Linse, after the summer holiday. The only player agent who was willing to do an interview before the summer holiday, was J.G. Herst.

Position Location Agency Preferable player agent

1. Den Haag Sport-promotion R. Jansen

2. Badhoevedorp Pro-Athlete Sports Management

S. Lens

3. Den Haag SP International R. Linse

4. Oosterhout Sportconsultant Nederland

A. Treffers

5. Nijmegen Sportmanagement BV T. Sanders

6. Zoetermeer - J.G. Herst

7. Haarlem Grandstand Football BV

P.F. van der Pol

8. Amsterdam Sports Entertainment Group

K. Ploegsma sr

9. Rotterdam Soccerworks A.G. Hendriks

10. Haarlem Total Football Agency R. Mettes

Coming back to Sport-promotion. The secretary of the agency told us none of the player agents had time. But, she was able to give us the email-address of the president of ProAgent. We had no success in trying to contact him via mail, but with a lot of luck, we found his cell phone number on the internet. When we called him, he responded, surprisingly, positive. He was willing to do an interview for us. In the meantime, we tried to contact Voetbal International. We got information about the fact that Tom Knipping was the expert concerning this topic within this organisation. He was,


however, on holiday. Later, though, the day before the deadline, we received a mail that he would want to cooperate. We await his final response, for the final version of our master proof. Also, we had set up a forum on internet concerning this topic. We got a few responses with general opinions about player agents, however one response stood out from the rest. He was a lecturer at Amsterdam University and told us that he had a university script concerning this topic. We had to wait for a few weeks, but eventually got the script. Quite quickly afterwards, we tried to contact three youth players. Chris Rog, playing for ADO Den Haag, Chris Tolman, playing for Sparta Rotterdam, and Brandon Tichem, playing for Alphense Boys. All three reacted positively. However, only Chris Rog and Chris Tolman stuck to their promise. With both of them, we held an interview. And then the summer holiday started. We decided to take a break and take up the work after the holiday. But, we knew that we could not finish the research without sources besides interviews. We worked on the first chapter and finished this one at the end of September. We were quite disappointed in the amount of interviews we could manage. After a contact with the KNVB, we got the email-address of the manager of media, Ronald de Haas. We have mailed him a few times by now, however without success. We decided to give up on a live interview with a person from a professional football club and decided to send out mails with questions to football clubs. The clubs we decided to contact earlier, received a mail. Without response. Eventually we decided that we had to aim at a lower level. Go Ahead Eagles mailed us back and provided us with answers to our questions. We got phone contact with FC Dordrecht, where we were promised to get an interview with one of the presidents, Marco Boogers. However when push come to shove, they knew nothing about this promise and told us that Marco Boogers ‘did not even has time to hold an interview, because he would soon be on holiday.’ Too bad. We decided we needed more information and decided to put online a survey, which got in the inbox of all teachers and students at the Alfrink College. We got 84 responses. When we called in to SP International, to try one more time, we got to hear that there was another player agent who was willing to give an interview to us. This was Jan de Visser, who even used to play for SC Heerenveen, AZ Alkmaar and won the UEFA Cup with Feyenoord Rotterdam. The interview went extremely smooth, which we recorded to process at home. Once home, we found that the recorder did not record any sound. Too bad. Therefore, the interview is made up of what we remember, which, in our eyes, worked out quite well. In the last week before we had to hand in our first draft of the master proof, we worked extremely hard, every day, to finish up the report. We had all the sources and the only thing we had to do, is to link them, filter them, and put everything on paper. In the week thereafter, two more interviews followed. First of all, an interview with Voetbal International journalist Tom Knipping and secondly general manager of FC Oss, a professional football club who plays in the Jupiler League. Due to the information we got from mister Knipping, we were able to investigate the subject from a whole new perspective and therefore we were able to completely re-write our conclusion. Thus, that is what we did. Also, we started to correct some grammatical mistakes when we got back our first version.


Chapter 3: Research Results

3.1 Background information 3.1.1 What is a sports agent? A sports agent is a person who is entitled to act as a representative for a professional athlete, or sports organisation, whenever dealing with third parties. In theory, a sports agent is just an intermediary to ensure that the supply and demand for labour in a sports market is met, but in fact, their functions are expanded in many sort of ways nowadays. As you can see in the picture below, the agents are in between the clubs, players and labour unions, but the agents are not in contact with the government whatsoever. The picture therefore illustrates perfectly what position the agents take in the market.

Source: Regulation in the market of sports agents, or no regulations at all? - University script.

3.1.2 What are his functions? As said in the previous paragraph, the functions of a sports agent has expanded over the years of time. Where at first a sports agent was just an intermediary between supply and demand in the labour market, a sports agent nowadays has many functions such as negotiating player contracts and providing advice on investment management. But he promotes his client in the endorsement and sponsorship market as well and, in the case of young athletes, he is a guidance on education and health as well. We will dig into each and every function deeper. Since most athletes have little to no experience with contract negotiation, a person who has the experience and is therefore able to negotiate for him, is extremely valuable. Also, a sports agent has more knowledge about the salaries provided to the athletes in the market under normal circumstances. However, due to the media attention and transparency of football clubs, the market of football players is no longer to be considered as a market under ‘normal circumstances’ nowadays. Most football players nowadays are aware of what a player at a certain level and in a certain country earns. This has, however, been different in the past. Also, a sports agent is considered necessary by a football player due to the fact that the bargaining process influences their performances. After a player has been brought to a certain club, it is important to maintain a good relationship with the club and third parties. This is another function of the sports agent. Whenever a contract is about to expire at a club, it is the duty of the player agent to negotiate with the club at which the athlete plays, or negotiate a contract with another club, also known as the Bosman ruling. The Bosman ruling is of importance whenever a player has less than six months remaining of his


contract at his current club. The athlete is then allowed to negotiate with third parties without the permission of his current club and without the obligatory payment to the club. Before the Bosman ruling, players were not allowed to sign contract with third parties when their contract was due.

But, besides the negotiations of football contracts, it is also the duty of the player agent to maintain good relations in the commercial sector to get endorsement for his player. Of course, player qualities, his appearance and his performances determine his endorsement value. However, a player agent who has got a huge network in the commercial sector, might provide his player with a bigger sponsor contract. As a comparison, we picked two of the, probably, best footballers at this moment, Lionel Messi (FC Barcelona) and Cristiano Ronaldo (Real Madrid). Both are paid enormously by their club, respectively 10 million Euros annually and 13.5 million Euros. However, there is a huge difference in endorsement deals. Lionel Messi has an endorsement deal with, Adidas and more. Cristiano Ronaldo has an endorsement deal with Nike, and more. As you can see, Cristiano Ronaldo earns a higher salary at his club, Lionel Messi on the other hand earns so much more endorsement money, which in the end makes Lionel messi earn more money. The reason we picked Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi as an example, is because of the fact that most information could be found on them. It is more difficult to find information concerning endorsement money from an average Dutch Eredivisie player. True, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are extremely interesting for the commercial sector, so a player agent will probably not have such a high impact on these two. What however could be concluded, is that a lower salary could be compensated by higher endorsement money. If you scale this down to an average Dutch Eredivisie player, a player agent with good connections in the commercial sector might be able to provide his player with higher endorsement money.

Figures 1 and 2: The annual income of respectively Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. Source: France Football Magazine.

Figure 3: The income of both Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo compared


According to J. De Visser, one of the main tasks of the player agent is calling, which links to

the maintaining of good relationships. He said the following. “We, as sports agents, namely are

constantly calling, constantly trying to get in contact with people. Just to get back on the topic of

Messi: he will sell himself, everyone is interested in a player like him. But the mass that comes after

him, look, there are for example four really good players who are suited for your team, but as a

football agent you have to try to get your player to this team and this is not as simple as people think.

Every time again we have to chat with the people from the club, letting them know which players we

offer and advising the football players for which football club they have to choose. People bluntly

think that, for example , with the transfer of Jonathan de Guzman from Mallorca to Villarreal, that

this just occurs in a minute, but is not the case. It consists of a long process and there is more to do

with this.” When we asked him what they exactly had to do, to get to an agreement, he said: “Well,

of course the negotiations. And not only the negotiations about the contract and the salary, but with

a player like Van Nistelrooij there is much more to it. In addition, you have to close deals for the

marketing, for the sponsorship and so on. Look, a football player of NAC Breda, you only have to

make a CAO, but for a top player with a name, there is much more to it. We have to deal with

merchandise, sponsor contracts and marketing and all kinds of factors that influence the

negotiations. You pay an agent for his network, basically. Someone who has a lot of contacts can

easier offer players at other clubs.”

The third function of a sports agent is the advice upon investment and the management of

the athlete’s income. There are two important reasons why an athlete would want to have advice upon investment and would need help with income management. First of all, overall a football player has a quite short career, compared with a normal career. Secondly, most of the football players get paid very well. So, a football player needs to get advice upon his expenses throughout the rest of his life. Also, a football player is on average quite rich at a young age and it needs a certain discipline not to spend every penny. Therefore, sports agents provide their clients with advice. However, it occurs that a specialist handles this function of the sports agent due to the fact that not all sports agents are well economically developed, as they studied, for example, law. The fourth function is quite new. Due to the fact that more often younger players are approached, the relationship between player and player agent is intensified and the player agent is therefore also a guidance upon a players health and progress. For example, a player agent might create an extra schedule, beside the club’s schedule, for extra training. With the rise of social media and gaming, players are more and more open to the public. A game which is played a lot nowadays and is even considered as a trustable and reliable usage of scouting (André Villas Boas, manager of Chelsea even confirmed using the game as a scouting tool), is Football Manager. In an interview with the producer of the game, Miles Jacobsen, he declares that nowadays player agents even contact him with the message: ‘Could you adapt the attributes of my player?’ Miles Jacobsen, however, states that the game should be reliable and independent and therefore is not influenced from the outside. It does, however, make a point, that player agents nowadays are constantly trying to positively influence the public opinion concerning their player. Therefore, with the rise of social media and gaming, the functions of a player agent has been expanded.


3.1.3 What qualities are ought to be necessary? In our interview with Roberto Branco Martins, the question arose of what qualities are ought to be necessary to be a successful player agent. He said that, first of all, an upcoming player agent needs to be a good networker, due to the fact that it is important to have a lot of contacts with football clubs. Another important quality is the ability to communicate with your player, because the player needs to have the feeling that no clashes will arise in the future between the player agent and the player himself. Therefore, it is important to be socially well developed. A player agent needs to be a good negotiator and thorough as well, in order to get the fullest out of contract negotiations. According to O*Net, a jobseekers information website, you need to be persuasive, in order to persuade others to “change their minds or behaviour”. Time Management is also a crucial ability according to this earlier mentioned site, because it is important to be able to manage “one's own time and the time of others.” The site also states that you need to be stress tolerant and be able to show leadership. Because the job, respectively, “requires accepting criticism and dealing calmly and effectively with high stress situations,” and “requires a willingness to lead, take charge, and offer opinions and direction.” Tom Knipping, journalist for the football magazine ‘Voetbal International’, says the following

about the qualities of a player agent: “The characteristics that a sports agents, in my eyes, must have

are that he must look at future, the long term, of a player and also keeps in mind the interest of the

Dutch football, where he earns his money nonetheless. What you now see with agents is that they

move 14 or 15 year old players to foreign clubs, where it is much better for them to develop

themselves on a sportive basis in the Netherlands. Take Jeffrey Bruma, who moved at a young age

from Feyenoord to Chelsea, who is almost in the Dutch national squad. He played almost no game for

Chelsea. If he would have stayed with Feyenoord, he maybe would have played 100 Eredivisie

matches and this could be much better for his development. A sports agent often chooses for the easy

money that can be earned, rather than look at the long term of his players. The same happened with

Castaignos of Feyenoord. Castaignos played quite good for the first squad of Feyenoord, but then

goes to Italy on one of the fist moments that he can cash, of course under pressure of his agent.

When he would have stayed 1 or 2 years longer in Rotterdam, then he could also have made this step,

maybe with the option of other clubs and he could already have been in the national squad. Agents

do have to look at the long term of their players and have to keep an eye on the interest of the Dutch

football.”


3.2. The history of sports agents

3.2.1 When did they begin to exist? Before 1990, many football players did not yet have a licensed sports agent, however football agents have existed since contract were set up between clubs and players. The only difference though, is that in the past, the agents were family members. If you consider the fact that, for example, in Sweden there were only three licensed football agents in 1995, yet 33 nowadays. In total, the FIFA says there are 5187 licensed football agents worldwide. This, of course, is too much to handle for the International Federation of Association Football, hence the fact that from 2001 onwards, national associations, such as the KNVB in Holland, decide when a football agent gets his official license.

Obviously, there are no primary or secondary sources that record the first sports agents in the world, but the answer to the question ‘When did sports agents begin to exist’ can be guessed. Agents in general have existed since people were in need of them. Since important and famous people have existed, there have existed people who have given them advises. An agent must create a smooth path to success for his client, to smoothen the way to the top. The client only has to use his talent to reach the top. Within sports, footballers use their football skills, while the sports agents link the players to interesting clubs. An example in history is that Charles Maurice de Talleyrand was the man who advised Louis XIV and so kept him in power. Louis XIV had his ‘talent’, namely his heritage. Julius Caesar used his speech skills and his great advisors wrote his speech and they dealt with tactical strategies to expand their empire.

All in all, this means that there has not been a clear point in history where sports agents have

begun to exist. Sports agents have gradually merged into the world of football, no exact date can identify the first sports agent in history.

If you then take a look at the way how the profession is continually increasing, you see that

the player agents really take over the world. There are more and more player agents each year and the expectation is that it shall rise even more.

Source: FIFA, as published in the Voetbal International, on the 31st of August 2011. Picture edited to the English language.


§ 3.2.2 Why did they begin to exist? The reason why sports agents became to exist is because football players have discovered that they were not certain if they were strong enough in negotiations with football clubs. In order to have a stronger voice in these conversations, football players hired agents, more specifically, people with juridical knowledge and experience in negotiating. In this way, they had more advantage in contract negotiations, to get paid more. Nowadays, a player has much more to say than before. For example, it happens to come across far more times that a player claims a limitation in his contract, for other clubs to buy him for a lower, limited price. When being a young football player and you would want to make it as a professional football player, you can come across difficulties, that a sports agent can solve. Roberto Branco Martins, the director of ProAgent, which is an umbrella organisation for all Dutch sports agent bureaus, says te following about it: ‘But anyway, I think it is annoying that a 15 year old boy is being offered a contract to play for a club and he wants to negotiate with a club, but you are not allowed to have an agent.’ (See appendix 2) He rightfully says that, when being a young talented football player, it is very difficult to get in touch with football clubs that can take you to this next level. It would be a pity when talented players can’t make this important career step. §3.2.3 How has the way in which sports agents operate changed over the years? There are a couple of developments that have changed the way in which sports agents operate. First of all The European Football Agents Association. The second import development we discuss is the creation of licences for sports agents. *Member of ProAgent Sports Agency Well-Known Agents Well-Known Clients

Sports Entertainment Group*

Alex Kroes, Kees Ploegsma, Kees Vos, Jeroen Hoogewerf,

Robin van Persie, Thomas Vermaelen (Arsenal), Fred Rutten, Jeremain Lens (PSV), Diego Biseswar, Stefan de Vrij (Feyenoord)

Sport-Promotion* Rob Jansen Ibrahim Afellay (FC Barcelona), Dirk Kuyt (Liverpool), Frank de Boer , Ronald de Boer, Dennis Bergkamp, Patrick Kluivert, (Ajax), Philip Cocu (PSV)

Essel Sport Management* Søren Lerby Wesly Sneijder (Inter Milan), Otman Bakkal (Feyenoord), Toby Alderweireld (Ajax), Danijel Pranjic (Bayern München)

JB Sports2Business* Jan van Baal Julio Santa Cruz (Blackburn Rovers), Roque Santa Cruz (Manchester City)

Pro Athlete Sports Management* Sigi Lens Royston Drenthe (Everton), Mounir El Hamdaoui, André Ooijer (Ajax), Denny Landzaat (FC Twente)

SP International* Rodger Linse, John Linse, Jan de Visser

Nigel de Jong (Manchester City), Ruud van Nistelrooij (Malaga), Salomon Kalou (Chelsea FC), Jonathan de Guzman (Villareal)

Maguire Tax and Legal Carmino Raiola Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Marc van Bommel (AC Milan), Mario balotelli-Barwuah (Manchester City), Maxwell (FC Barcelona)


The first important development in the history of sport agents is the founding of ProAgent. ProAgent represents the interests of football agents, attempting to form a collective voice against the regulations that the national football associations have set up. Roberto Branco Martins tells more about the establishment: ‘Before ProAgent had been founded, the sports agents did not have a voice to defend their interest. In international football politics you must cope with the FIFA, this is the world football association, the UEFA, this is the European football association, then you have the KNVB, this is the national football association and in addition the national law. But in fact, the sports agents fall inside the scope of the regulations of the FIFA, but on the other side within the scope of national law. So there are a lot of different laws that go for sports agents, but all, in fact, very regulated. In the past, it occurred once in a while that sports agents would get the blame of everything, so this seemed the right moment to formulate a response and, next to this, there must be put more time into thinking about other forms of regulations concerning activities of sports agent and this is why ProAgent has been founded.’ (see appendix 2) ProAgent is a cooperation of almost all the important sports agencies.

If you take a look at the table at the previous page, there can be noticed that almost all the big sports agencies cooperate with ProAgent, only the agency of Carmino Raiola is not a member of the staff of ProAgent. In total, ProAgent has 48 staff members, including the six big shots above, but also including agencies that scout talents and accompany them. All together, they try to form one voice in the national and international football politics, in a way to create a block against the regulatory system that has been created in the last decades. This is because football has shifted more and more to the economical sector and this organising side of football consists of an enormous amount of rules and regulations. One of the objectives of ProAgent is to simplify the work of football agents, in terms of simplifying this regulatory system. A way in which they want to achieve this objective is to arrange a meeting or training for football agents, where they can update their knowledge about the regulations and rules of the organisational side of football. Roberto Branco Martins explains: ‘We organise for our staff, factually this considers that organise informative afternoons, where we inform our staff about recent developments in the routine of football. So it is basically keeping the knowledge of agents up-to-date. … , this basically says that you must be informed constantly about the recent developments in and these workshops are only enterable for our members and the employees of our members.’(see appendix 2).

Another development is the introduction of licenses, by FIFA and the national associations.

Tom Knipping explains the importance and the problem of it: “When you like to close off a contract in the Netherlands, for a player or a club, you can do this in a couple of ways. First you can do this if you are direct family of the player, father mother or a brother. Then you can serve for this player. Or you are a lawyer, then you also can close off a contract for a player. At last you can have a agent license, of the KNVB, then you also can close off deals. When you don’t have a license or you aren’t an lawyer or you aren’t a direct family member, then the contract is not official. You can receive this license by making an exam. In every country in the world, 2 times per year, an exam will be held, which contains 15 questions of the FIFA and 5 questions of the national football agencies. The questions are multiple choice and most of the time you have to have 13 or 14 questions correct, which depends on your exam. When having these correct, you will have your agent license. In the Netherlands there are 118 or 120 licensed agents and 6000 worldwide.”

Tom Knipping further talks about how the way of operating of an agent has changed: “Well, I

work at VI for 10 years now and when I started you hear also some crazy stories one in a while, but

the last years you hear so many stories of agents doing business with children and you also see a lot

of trials or agents who stand before clubs and who claim absurdly high sums of money, that it even

becomes worse, which is logical, because there are a lot more agents with the same amount of

players in the world. When you say that you have the same amount of 300 to 400 players in the


Netherlands and ten years ago there were 20 agents and nowadays there are 120 agents. It is logical

that the bigger competition brings a lot more wrongs and abuses with them.”

3.2.4 How can an agency contribute to a sports agent?

When a sports agent starts with representing the interests of a player, he might think about starting

up a sports agency. In fact, almost every sports agent works for a sport agency. A sport agency can

form a cooperation between multiple sports agents, to share their clients and together they can

represent the interests of a football player. When having more players, the chance of recruiting

football players increases as well, while a lot of football players are approached by word-of-mouth

advertisement. Football players have a conversation in the locker room about which agent to take

(see chapter 3.3.1). When having more clients, there are more conversations and thus more

advertisement. It also is a sort of brand that you carry along. You would rather choose for a football

agency with a lot of internationals than for an agency with moderate football players. Football agent

J. De Visser comments on this: ‘It is this way, that when a football player sees that players from our

agency build up a nice career and so having success, so concerning this, you have a certain

advantage. Football players also find it interesting that football players who joined of SP-

International , have a high reputation. Then they also like to join our agency.’(see appendix 4)

This is a list of the sports agencies with the highest average market value of their football player. The

average market value is the total market value, divided by the amount of clients.

Rank Agency Agents Well-Known Clients Amount Of Clients

Total market Value

Average Market Value

1. Allain Migliaccio

Allain Migliaccio

Franck Ribéry, Samir Nasri, Yoann Gourcuff, Zinedine Zidane, Laurent Blanc, Eric Cantona

16 £107,888,000 £6,743,000

2. Grupo Santos Idub

Miguel Santos

Samuel Eto’o, Xabi Alonso, Mikel Arteta

15 £88,616,000 £5,907,733

3. Pinhas Zahavi Pinhas Zahavi

Carlos Tévez, Javier Mascherano, João Moutinho, Fernando Belluschi

17 £96,360,000 £5,668,235

4. Gestifute Jorge Mendes, Luis Correia

Christiano Ronaldo, Pepe, Nani, Falcao, Angel Di Maria, Ricardo Carvalho, Thiago Silva, Anderson

84 £445,522,000 £5,303,803

5. Euro Export Assessoria e Propaganda Lda.

Giuliano Bertolucci

David Luiz, Alex, Luisão, 13 £67,056,000 £5,158,153


After analysing this table, you can easily see some patterns. The clients of the agencies belong to

certain groups. For example, Gestifute deals with almost all the greatest football players of Portugal.

you can find a lot of French top players with Allain Migliaccio and Argentinians are likely to have their

interests represented by Pinhas Zahavi. All these patterns can be related back to the most important

aspect that a football agent must have: a network. A football player, or better said a club, pays a

football agency for their network. Agents with no network are not likely to negotiate with the

important clubs in the world, or wouldn’t have all Portuguese talents in his agency.


3.3 The role of sports agents nowadays 3.3.1 How are players approached?

It is often said that not only scouts are present whenever talented players play against each other. Often, player agents tend to scout themselves for the next potential superstar. In order to get the highest profit, they tend to try and contact the potentially best players. Lots of player agents want to get in touch with these young players. But besides young players, there are also older players looking for agents, as a replacement or whenever they had never had one. So, how do player agents approach their players?

In the interview with R. B. Martins, it is stated that not only player agents approach players, but also player agents are approached by players. This is of course only the case whenever a certain player agent has build up such a good reputation. But in most cases, the player agent takes ‘recruiting actions’. A player agent would walk upon a player, for example after a match or training, with the question whether he is already accompanied by a player agent. It could however for example also happen that, according to Mr. Martins, football players have a conversation with colleagues, discussing the fact they are looking for a new player agent. Well, in this case, the ball rolls on. Either the player contacts the advised player agent, or the player agent approaches the player who is looking for a new player agent. He also states, that player agents tend to visit the family in their approach, especially when young players are concerned. The players agents feel it is important to fully inform the parents about their activities and the services they offer.

J.G. Herst confirms the view of R.B. Martins. In the interview, he said that the process of

recruiting players differs per player. He also confirms the fact that players sometimes approach agents.

Both J.G. Herst and R.B. Martins declare that there is no definite approach in the recruitment

of players. Every player needs a different approach and therefore, players are approached in different ways.

J. De Visser sketches another image, however. According to him, his agency bureau

approaches the player. So here is already a major difference in the way players are approached, if you compare player agents who work at an agency bureau and player agents who work for themselves. However, J. De Visser does confirm the fact that sometimes, players approach them. 3.3.2 What is the view on sports agents nowadays?

Player agents have an image problem. The player agents are seen as the temporary commission hunters from the Wild West. The only thing that has changed, is their appearance. No longer are they wearing a long raincoat and a rival under their arm. Their gear has changed to a tailor made suit and an IPhone permanently stuck to their ear. No longer are they riding on a horse, but they are riding in their way too expensive car. The image is clear: Tough, money chasing and self-centred people.

For the public, there is no clear line between the good player agents and the ones with bad motives. They are all the same. The player agents who have been in the market for several years and have been fair from the start, are no longer able to distinguish themselves as fair to the public. “Player agents are the parasites of professional football,” Johan Derksen, head director of Voetbal International, was clear about his opinion in an interview on the 18th of august 2009. The


public seems to be quite clear about their opinions. On a forum which we opened on internet, about player agents, the most shared opinion was that “player agents are self-centred and are only interested in quick cashing”. Is this really the public opinion? For our research, we decided to do a web-based survey concerning player agents. The questions ‘What is, according to you, the role of a sports agent?’ and ‘How important do you think a player agent is?’ immediately sets the tone about the public opinion. We are aware of the fact that this is a small group and therefore not completely reliable, but it does make a statement.

In the survey (the results could be found in appendix 1) 72 of the total of 84 responses rated the importance of player agent with a six or higher. Therefore, 85.7% of the survey consider the player agent as a positive addition to the market. If you then dig deeper into their answers, by looking at the answers to the question what the role of a player agent is, we find that there are two clear groups in the public opinion. Lots of people believe a player agent is just there to ‘suck out all the money’, whilst others believe player agents are there to ‘guide the players’ and to ‘get the best possible contract for their player.’ In other words, one believes a player agent steals money away, whilst others believe player agents try to get the best for their clients. Ironically, many of the people who consider the player agents useful, still tend to believe they are self-centred.

So, what about the football players themselves? There is a lot of difference

concerning the football players. For example Ismail Aissati told the press he was ‘disappointed’ with his player agent, Rodger Linse, due to the fact he did not tell his client about an interesting offer. Thus, there are players who are disappointed by their player agents. There is, however, another part of the football players. In the Hi5 Award winning video on youtube, Andre Ooijer and Giovanni van Bronckhorst both told a common story about their player agent. According to van Bronckhorst, he ‘knows Sigi Lens for a long time. Sigi Lens is my guidance from the beginning of my career and he has been important from the beginning of my career. Whenever I think of Sigi (Lens, red.), I think of honesty, warmth , family. That is what Sigi told me from the start: “Family always comes first.” He has always supported me and I am very thankful for him what he has done for me and he is still part of my life. Sigi, thanks! You deserve it, you are great!’. Andre Ooijer also responded. He told the press that Sigi Lens was very important for him to make sure that he ‘keeps on the right track.’ According to the defender, Sigi Lens has been and still is a great ‘mainstay’.

What we could conclude from this, is that there are different viewpoints. This is quite logical,

because there are different kinds of people working in the market of player agents. It is true what James Herst told, that ‘Just like in every industry, there are colleagues who have wrong motives for their actions.’

The media contributes to the negative point of view many people have. When there is a juicy

story about football agents and the astronomical high cheque they obtain, they will use it and they will publish it. But in our research for this master proof we have come across quite a lot of articles, where only one side has been exposed to the public, the side that puts football agents in a negative daylight. We have chosen an example of this. One of the many examples is the article on the website ‘Mirror Football’ that tries to publish up-to-date news in the world of football. In the article ‘Chelsea Squander £9 Million On Agent Fees For Two Players’ (see appendix 8), they state that this astronomically amount of fees has been paid to football agents in the season 2008/2009, but only having made two transfers for new football players. They had bought Yossi Benayoun for £5 million and the Brazilian Ramires for £18 million. So basically, they state this without further explanation that those two transfers has costed £9.3 Million on transfer fees, which is 9.3/(5+18)x100=40.4% of both transfers. The Mirror Football is totally wrong here. They forget to state that in the season 2008/2009, transactions are made to the football agents, out of a percentage of the player’s salary. Also contract extensions and youth transfers are excluded. So there are a lot more transactions made


than ‘only two’. The Mirror Football sketches a really negative image of football agents and football clubs, while not backing up their arguments or even research if their arguments are right.

3.3.3 What is happening with youth football players nowadays? The last years there has been a lot of commotion about football agents approaching minor football players and contracting them. A lot of people think that it is ethically wrong to offer a contract to a football player younger than 16 years old, while they are often given unrealistic promises and the minor football players often move to foreign countries too early, since not every football player who moves to countries where there are stronger competitions. A football player, who is very talented, is attractive for football agents, since they are very cheap and they consume less time in comparison to the professional football players. The KNVB has made a set of laws to attempt to stop this phenomenon. The KNVB law states: ‘a football agent is obliged to abstain from activities or business with football player who are under the age of 16’. Roberto Branco Martins, the director of ProAgent, told in the interview with us his outspoken opinion about this phenomenon. He thinks it is in principal right, but there can’t be done much about it. ‘I think that it fits into a bigger system of the counteract against transfers of minorities. You should basically create a waterproof system. But, this is not easy. This is very tough. Presently, there is said that sports agents must stop approaching the youthful talents, but obviously, when a player is not catching the eye of a club, that an agent is not allowed to approach him is one thing. And the second question will be, ‘how do you have to do it differently?’, this is also just guessing. But anyway, I think it is annoying that a 15 year old boy is being offered a contract to play for a club and he wants to negotiate with a club, but you are not allowed to have an agent. So, the boy is basically forced to have an illegal agent to negotiate for him, but this does not look like it is meant this way. So there are some complications’ (See appendix 2) A couple of developments has made sports agents approach football players, who are younger than 16 years. This is the development in the quantity of football agents. Nowadays, there are 118 football agents in the Netherlands. Because there is a bigger supply of football agents than is demanded, they are going to search their clients in a group where officially they are not allowed to search. The football agents, who do not have a great reputation and so have difficulties to recruit new clients, are shifting to the minor football players, who are easier to be persuaded. Another development is the scouting of bigger and stronger clubs from other countries, who are snatching away talented football players, who are under the age of 16. Most of the time, these clubs are from the English Premier League. Earlier examples of these transfers are Jeffrey Bruma (Feyenoord) and Patrick van Aanholt (PSV), who both moved to the London football club Chelsea. Also Kyle Ebicilio, who used to be in the Feyenoord youth squad, has left to seek his fortune at the London club Arsenal. These big clubs will act accordingly: The scouts of the club will report that a very talented football player is playing at a youth squad of a certain football club. They analyse him, and when they are convinced, they try to approach him behind the scenes and they try to persuade him to go to this club. Most of the time, these clubs have such a reputation, that there is not a lot needed to persuade such a boy. There are rumours though, that clubs offer these talents a lot of money and a big house and car for his family, although this can’t be proven. The transfer will be finished behind the scenes, because an agent is not obliged to have business with a minor. The player is persuaded and will play for the club next season. An example that occurred not so long ago was the case of Nathan Aké. Nathan Aké joined the academy team of Feyenoord Rotterdam on a youthful age and he played three years for the football clubs from Rotterdam. Feyenoord had good hopes to contract him, when he would become 16. Only months before his birthday, word has been raised that Manchester City and Chelsea were eager to recruit him to their club. Rumours were spread that Daan Kramp, an agent of the football agency Forza Fides Sports Managent (and a member of ProAgent) had reported Chelsea about the talent of


Aké. They were both photographed at the training academy of Chelsea. Nathan was persuaded by Chelsea and he was determined to play for Chelsea. Technical director Leo Beenhakker couldn’t convince Aké of staying at Feyenoord, so he was forced to make a deal with Chelsea of the sum of £250,000. In addition, an annual sum £90,000 has to be paid. Feyenoord was very frustrated, because all their talents are being snapped away by bigger clubs. Leo Beenhakker reacted furiously: ‘The English clubs are the big polluters of football.’ It didn’t end at the deal, because the KNVB charged sports agent Daan Kramp of violating the rules they had set up. He was accused of having business with a minor football player, Nathan Aké. Daan Kramp has been acquitted by court, because it couldn’t been proven that he had business with Nathan Aké. Tom Knipping, journalist for Voetbal International, says the following about rectruiting minor

players: “Feyenoord obviously had a very talented football academy. But you may not be mistaken in

the mechanism that occurs in the dressing room. For example, earlier this year, Nathan Aké moved

from Feyenoord to Chelsea. When he was 14 he already could move to certain English clubs. When

such an offer has been made, the boys are obviously talking about it in the dressing room. Everbody is

exaggerating about the offers they have been made, what they are going to earn, what their parents

are going to earn. On a certain moment, everybody wants to leave, certainly, on the moment that

Feyenoord wasn’t a real top club anymore. When you then can make a move to an English top club

and you can make more money, than it is obviously understandable. Their agent will sketch this much

better than it is and the clubs can’t do much about this. Actually, you can’t do anything about it,

because when you offer a player of 14 such a contract and offering their parents a job, then you can’t

do anything as a club, there is no money to do this, so basically this is unfair concurrence. You can say

that staying in the Netherlands is on long terms much better, but it won’t help anymore. When they

do have a surety of this fast money, then they often choose for this. A club is basically powerless.”

This example contributes to the bad image that has been created in the last years about sports agents. The case was largely exposed in the media, so this influences the public opinion about football agents. Tom Knipping also has an opinion towards the image of the agents: “Yes, because they

withdraw a lot of money out of the world of football. When Chelsea buys a transfer sum to PSV, then

the money stays in the world of football. But when 2 million has to be payed to an agent then, then it

disappears in the pockets of an agent and this will appear on the private bank account. And in this

way you profit from the large sums of money that are situated in the world of football. And they are

capable of suppress the clubs, when you like to have a good player, then you are almost obliged to

pay the agent a high bonus, because then he will say that he could bring this player to another club.

Then they are willing to pay 1 million. El Hamdaoui was a great example in the end of August, with

Udinese in Italy. The owner of Udinese flew to Belgium to negotiate with Sigi Lens, the agent of El

Hamdaoui. Sigi Lens claimed 1 million Euros in this negotiations, next to a enormous salary for El

Hamdaoui, otherwise the deal wouldn’t be closed. Eventually, the president of Udinese came back to

his offer and said he didn’t want to do it, with the consequence that now El Hamdoui is playing for

Ajax B. A lot of agents think that after one deal, you become financially independent. This kind of

examples are causing this image.”


3.4 The financial part of sports agency 3.4.1 How do sports agents make a living? ‘Sports agents get paid whenever their client gets paid.’ It is an old saying in the profession, but still counts. Sports agents get a percentage of what their client gets paid, and the percentage differs. Also, they get a percentage of different things. First of all, intermediaries get a percentage of a transfer fee, or a fee, in agreement beforehand, whenever their client makes a transfer to another club. The player agent also gets paid whenever his client signs a new contract at his club. The player agent gets a certain commission, which in this case is also in agreement beforehand. However, the commission does not always count. Most players and their agents are happy to be able to sign a contract and thus are not expecting another commission for the effort of the player agent. But, the player agent does get a percentage of the annual salary of the player, of which the payment is agreed upon. In this way, an intermediary is able to stabilize their income. According to J. De Visser, you are indeed able to stabilize your income, but you have high peaks. “You make agreements with clubs. You will obviously get a percentage of the annual salary of a football player and you make agreements with clubs about this sum. So, concerning this, you will have your income in your own hands. Obviously, you will have the transfer periods, where you will earn more money than in other periods of the year. On the other hand, for certain football players you will already be happy to have found a football club for him, so you wouldn’t expect a commission. On commissions will be made agreements, separated from the fixed percentage of the annual salary. Well, if you take Lionel Messi for example: yes: you will get an enormous commission for him, because clubs are so interested in him. But for other players, you will already be happy for him if he found a club., so you won’t expect a commission.“

Source: Regulation in the market of sports agents, or no regulations at all? – University script.

According to the university script, the sports agents are investing a little money and time in the beginning. This payoff is therefore going down until the moment when a contract is reached, which is point A. At this moment, the sports agent gets his commission and therefore, the payoff goes up. At point B, the player has negotiated a new contract at his club and therefore a new commission fee is being paid. Before point B, he has to invest money and time again. Of course, the model is simplified, but provides us with a good illustration of the way payoff works in the market of player agents.


The most important costs a player agent has, our phoning costs due to large amount of phone calls he makes (abroad). Besides phoning costs, a lot of money is invested in the travelling costs, as well domestic as abroad and the hereby coming residence costs, for example in hotels.

3.4.2 What do clubs pay a year to sports agents? *the column ‘expenditures in Euros are converted with the valuta exchange rate of October 8th 2011. The real figures are estimated in the same amounts as here

Source: The Sun

*the column ‘expenditures in Euros are converted with the valuta exchange rate of October 8th 2011. The real figures are estimated around the same amounts as here

Ranking Football Club Expenditure in Pounds

Expenditure in Euros

1. Manchester City £12,874,283 €14,863,803.04

2. Chelsea £9,562,223 €11,039,915.72

3. Liverpool £6,657,305 €7,686,087.86

4. Tottenham Hotspur £6,066,935 €7,004,485.37

5. West Ham United £5,527,548 €6,381,376.13

6. Arsenal £4,760,241 €5,495,544.91

7. Wigan Athletic £3,576,972 €4,129,498.96

8. Portsmouth £3,184,725 €3,676,662.43

9. Bolton Wanderers £3,166,611 €3,655,750.40

10. Everton £2,008,407 €2,318,641.19

11. Sunderland £2,007,040 €2,315,205.42

12. Aston Villa £1,708,374 €1,970,681.57

13. Blackburn Rovers £1,610,885 €1,858,223.89

14. Hull City £1,599,188 €1,844,730.91

15. Manchester United £1,517,393 €1,750,376.92

16. Fulham £1,469,258 €1,694,851.16

17. Wolverhampton Wanderers £1,235,703 €1,425,435.61

18. Birmingham City £974,982 €1,124,682.92

19. Stoke City £716,042 €825,984.69

20. Burnley £468,398 €540,316.88

Total £70,629,531 €81,744,368.40

Ranking Football Club Expenditure in Pounds

Expenditure in Euros

1. Chelsea £9,293,751.48 €10,746,706.15

2. Liverpool £9,032,528.49 €10,444,644.41

3. Manchester City £5,952,261.33 €6,882,818.37

4. Tottenham Hotspur £5,361,229.87 €6,199,386.99

5. Sunderland £4,421,990.72 €5,113,310.27

6. Arsenal £3,660,199.00 €4,232,422.53

7. Everton £3,599,040.51 €4,161,702.72

8. Bolton Wanderers £3,549,316.72 €4,104,205.27

9. West Ham United £3,419,089.99 €3,953,619.32

10. Wigan Athletic £2,461,500.00 €2,846,322.85

11. Newcastle United £2,417,776.00 €2,795,763.18

12. Manchester United £2,312,726.00 €2,674,290.01

13. Aston Villa £2,279,536.50 €2,635,911.77

14. Stoke City £2,196,968.50 €2,540,435.36

15. Fulham £2,087,373.55 €2,413,706.70


Source: Transferleague.co.uk

These tables represent the total amount of money that has been paid to a sports agent by a football club in the Barclay’s Premier League (The highest English football division) in the season 2008/2009 (table 1) and in the season 2009/2010 (table 2), both in Pounds and in Euros. What is most interesting to see, is that the total amount of money paid to player agents have decreased in a year time. The numbers of the season 2010/2011 have not yet been published, however. The English Premier League is the only European football league which obliges the participating teams to make the amounts paid to player agents public. That is why we have taken the numbers from the English Premier League. You could not expect the numbers to be of the same height in, for example, the Dutch Eredivisie, due to the fact that the sums paid for transfers in the Eredivisie is way lower than the sums paid in the Premier League. You can notice that in season 2008/2009, a total sum of £70.6 million has been paid to football agents. This has been paid over 792 transactions. The average commission per transaction to a football agent in the Premier League in season 2008/2009 was £70,629.531/792 = £89,178.70 per transaction. The total sums paid in the season 2009/2010 was £67.1 million. About 3.1 million pounds less. The amount of transactions, was however lower. The amount of transactions decreased by 6% to a total of 742. The average commission per transaction to a football agent in the Premier League in the season 2009/2010 was therefore £67,138,040.40/742 = £90,482.54 per transaction. What is then significant to see, is that the amount of commission paid per transaction has risen by more than 13,000 Pounds. It is therefore ironic to see that the media states that the Premier League clubs have paid a lower fee to player agents, which is therefore a reduction on their costs, but the media did not take into consideration the amount of transactions, which is of course of vital importance in such figures.

16. Blackburn Rovers £1,623,232.92 €1,877,003.84

17. Birmingham City £1,518,529.09 €1,755,930.96

18. Wolverhampton Wanderers £1,291,794.00 €1,493,748.84

19. West Bromwich Albion £614,195.73 €710,217.08

20. Blackpool £45,000.00 €52,035.15

Total £67,138,040.40 €77,634,181.78


Source: Catenaccio. The image shows the total amount of expenditures and income over the last ten years of transfers. The coloured lines are the averages.

If you take a look at the image above, you see that most clubs have a negative saldo. Due to the fact that extremely rich, mostly Arab, people took over the clubs Chelsea, Manchester United and Manchester City, who invested a lot of money in the clubs, their expenditures over the last few years is much higher than the expenditures earlier in the century. However, Arsenal is known for their moderature expenditures, which is also visible in the table. If we then take a look at the expenditures from Arsenal to player agents, we find Arsenal back on the sixth position. If we compare this to Manchester United (15th and 12th), which has a much higher expenditure pattern, we find that Arsenal pays a lot more to player agents relative to their expenditures and income. In a world which is considered to be in a financial crisis, we find that Manchester United is much better at keeping the amounts spend on player agents , relatively to their expenditures and income, low. Arsenal seems, therefore, to be more easily spending a lot of amounts to player agents. The conclusion can be drawn that football clubs could cut in agent fees, but many clubs neglect this.

This is what Tom Knipping tells about the financial: “An agent basically makes its revenue

from the commissions from the loans of a player. The minimum has been selected by the FIFA, a

percentage of 3%. You probably know that, when you have an interesting player who can move to

several clubs, then you can negotiate about a more attracting percentage with the club, between the


7% and 12%, which he receives over the annual lone of a player. So you’ve got a player who earns 1

million Euros and a commission has been agreed upon 10%, then you will receive a ton per year.

When a player signs for 4 years, you will get 4 tons. When you have interesting players, you often will

get a commission. This is the most interesting part for agents. This is a sort of bonus of the club that

they receive, for bringing the player to the club. This is actually one of the major problems of FIFA and

the European Commission, because it is often unclear if the agent works for the player or the club. If I

have a player for both Ajax and PSV and Ajax pays half a million commission more, then this means

that I will try to push this player to Ajax. But in fact these are the two most important sources of

income for the agents. The costs that he makes are composed of mainly telephone costs, travelling

costs, because he obviously has to fly and book hotels a lot. Larger agencies obviously have more

employees. I can understand that at an agency of Sport promotion, where Rob Jansen works, that

they have annual reports. Maybe you can find this at the Chamber of Commerce. These are broadly

said where it comes to. You can see, that when you make a transfer, you will have around 20000

Euros for costs, that there will be a lot left.”


Chapter 4: Conclusion

Our hypothesis was as follows: Player agents are still important to a player in order to keep focus at playing football instead of worrying about other business related issues. We believe that our research confirmed our hypothesis. We came to the conclusion that player agents are the ones who take control of every aspect besides football for the player, in order for the player to be able to concentrate fully on playing football. Only in that way, a player is able to reach his full potential. A player agent is therefore necessary for a player to reach his full potential. However, in our research we found out many more things, which we did not put in our hypothesis. Besides business related issues, a player agent also provides his client with advice on how to react on certain issues, when a player should take rest, what the best diet for his client is. The tasks of a player agent seem to be endless. Therefore, our viewpoints concerning player agents have drastically changed. In the beginning, we were influenced by the media in a way that we believed player agents are only interested in quick cashing and although that is true for a certain part of the player agents in the market, the gross of the player agents seem to be fair. We got more respect for the work player agents do. We certainly believe in the fact that a player without the skills of an absolute top player, thus a player like Lionel Messi, is not able to reach the top on his own. He needs someone to guide him. We were astonished by the contrast about the viewpoints concerning player agents. For the outside world, player agents are self-centred, tough, money chasing people whilst football players describe them as warm and caring. This is mainly caused by the fact that almost no player knows what the costs of an agent are, because the agent is paid by the club. This leads to a direct confrontation between clubs and agents, agents ask astronomically high sums of money for their services, but clubs can’t form a strong voice against this. There have, however, arose new research questions. What about the ideas of the FIFA to abolish the profession of player agent, in which no license will be necessary anymore. What would be the specific effects on the market? What would be the specific effects on the commissions being paid? Also, what about the ideas of the FIFA to oblige the player to pay the player agent, whereas at the moment the clubs need to pay the player agents. What would be the effects of that? Would fewer players have an agent? Would the commissions rise, or decline? We decided to not comment on the ideas of the FIFA, because it would be too broad to write about and it has no benefit for our master proof, because it does not comment on their role.

We can also state that player agents are the key of the transfer market. The agent decides where his client will move to, how much he earns and how high the transfer sum is. If there is a difference in opinion in the club, then the deal will not be closed, simply because another club will be found, by the extensive network of an agent. So the agents are the key factors in the transfers of football players. This is different from the past, in which the football clubs were the most influential players on the market. You can, therefore, see a change in the power position of the player agents.

There can also be noticed, that there is a lot of competition, which leads to unfair practice and the breaking of rules, think of bribery. Also, players younger than the age of 16 are approached. The FIFA and European Commission are trying to do something about this, but are not yet successful.


Chapter 5: Afterword We planned quite well. In the week before the summer holiday, we had made a lot of hours, that we invested in our master proof. This resulted in a very beneficial interview before the summer holidays, namely the one with Roberto Branco Martins. In this way, we already had made a set up for after the holiday. However, our planning got stuck because of the people who were willing to help us at the very last moment, think of the a day before the hand-in date. We are really thankful for each and every person who helped us in our research, no matter at what time, but it did change our, beforehand made, plans. Because we attempted to arrange an interview very early, we had time left after the holidays to work on the writing. But our planning was heavily disturbed by people who promised to give an interview, but who cancelled their interview short before the date on which we had arranged it. We think our cooperation was excellent. We both were extremely interested in the subject, which resulted in motivated work. We constantly kept in touch whenever we worked separately. However, most of the time we worked on the subject, we worked together. We worked in a classroom with one person working at the computer and another one besides him at a laptop, which made the contact throughout the research most beneficial and made sure that whenever we got stuck, another person could immediately help out. We attempted to work in a very efficient way. Our qualities differ, so in this way, we could fill up the qualities that the other one is lacking. We would have put more time in the summer holiday. Due to the fact that we took a break in the summer holiday, most contacts with people who know about the market or work inside the market, had faded away. Therefore, we had to do an awful lot of work at trying to contact people after the summer holiday. Of course, it was not beneficial for us at all that the heaviest period of the profession was during the months we got to work on it, which are June, July and August, due to the transfer period.


Chapter 6: Summary A sports agent is a person who is entitled to act as a representative for a professional athlete, or

sports organisation, whenever dealing with third parties. Their functions are:

intermediate between supply and demand in the labour market

negotiate player contracts

advice on investment management

promote his client in the endorsement and sponsorship market

guide on education and health as well (in the case with youth players)

A sports agent ought to have certain qualities or characteristics, such as being a good networker,

being socially developed, being a negotiator, being thorough, being persuasive, being a time

manager, being stress tolerant and being able to show leadership.

Football agents began to exist since contracts were set up between clubs and players . Obviously,

there are no written sources that state when the first football agents erupted. There have always

been agents who created a smooth path to success for his client. The client only has to use his talent

to reach the top, think of Caesar, Elvis and other talented people. The reason why player agents

began to exist is because football players wanted to have a stronger voice in contract negotiations

and because they needed someone who could bring them in contact with other clubs. The way in

which sports agents operate has changed in time, caused by two developments, namely the founding

of umbrella organisation ProAgent and the introduction of licences for sports agents.

Often player agents are approached by players. This is of course only the case whenever a certain

player agent has build up such a good reputation. Every player needs a different approach and

therefore, players are approached in different ways.

Player agents have an image problem. For the public, there is no clear line between the good

player agents and the ones with bad motives. They are all the same. The player agents who have

been in the market for several years and have been fair from the start, are no longer able to

distinguish themselves as fair to the public. The media contributes to the negative point of view

many people have. When there is a juicy story about football agents and the astronomical high

cheque they obtain, they will use it and they will publish it. But in our research for this master proof

we have come across quite a lot of articles, where only one side has been exposed to the public, the

side that puts football agents in a negative daylight. The public opinions differs from the opinion that

the football players has on sports agents. They think they are warm, caring, just like family.

The last years there has been a lot of commotion about football agents approaching minor

football players and contracting them. A lot of people think that it is ethically wrong to offer a

contract to a football player younger than 16 years old, while they are often given unrealistic

promises and the minor football players often move to foreign countries too early, since not every

football player who moves to countries where there are stronger competitions. A football player,

who is very talented, is attractive for football agents, since they are very cheap and they consume

less time in comparison to the professional football players. The KNVB has made a set of laws to

attempt to stop this phenomenon. The KNVB law states: ‘a football agent is obliged to abstain from

activities or business with football player who are under the age of 16’.

A sports agent makes a living through receiving commissions, a percentage of the annual salary,

through percentages of transfers and through fees of a football club.


Sourcelist Dutch newspaper: http://www.ad.nl/ad/nl/1441/Ajax/article/detail/2892815/2011/09/06/Aissati-dumpt-zaakwaarnemer-na-achterhouden-bod-Vitesse.dhtml Official FIFA Rules: http://www.fifa.com/aboutfifa/officialdocuments/doclists/laws.html Lerby case http://nieuws.nl.msn.com/home/lerby-legde-te-jonge-spelers-vast What is a sports agent ? http://www.sportzpower.com/?q=content/headliner-%E2%80%93-regulation-sports-agents http://education-portal.com/become_a_sports_agent.html http://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/13-1011.00 Interview Miles Jacobsen http://fm.manutd.nl/content/view/4039/1/ Salaries http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Lionel_Messi_salary Interview Roberto Branco Martins, extra http://www.radio1.nl/contents/23890-roberto-branco-martins-over-voetbalmakelaars Public view amongst player agents http://www.vi.nl/WebTV/WebTV-Beste-Johan/168916/Zaakwaarnemers-zijn-de-parasieten-van-het-voetbal.htm Transfer fees spend http://soccerbusinessworld.com/uefa/premier-league-clubs-spend-67m-on-agents/ http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/football/2752758/Agents-cash-in-to-tune-of-71million.html Bias http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/news/Chelsea-top-the-spending-list-for-agent-fees-as-the-Premier-

League-squanders-67m-in-2009-10-article641525.html

University script http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Regulation+in+the+market+of+sports+agents.+Or+no+regulation+at+all%3F-a0249138219

http://www.ad.nl/ad/nl/1441/Ajax/article/detail/2892815/2011/09/06/Aissati-dumpt-zaakwaarnemer-na-achterhouden-bod-Vitesse.dhtml

http://www.ad.nl/ad/nl/1441/Ajax/article/detail/2892815/2011/09/06/Aissati-dumpt-zaakwaarnemer-na-achterhouden-bod-Vitesse.dhtml

http://www.fifa.com/aboutfifa/officialdocuments/doclists/laws.html

http://nieuws.nl.msn.com/home/lerby-legde-te-jonge-spelers-vast

http://www.sportzpower.com/?q=content/headliner-%E2%80%93-regulation-sports-agents

http://education-portal.com/become_a_sports_agent.html

http://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/13-1011.00

http://fm.manutd.nl/content/view/4039/1/

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Lionel_Messi_salary

http://www.radio1.nl/contents/23890-roberto-branco-martins-over-voetbalmakelaars

http://www.vi.nl/WebTV/WebTV-Beste-Johan/168916/Zaakwaarnemers-zijn-de-parasieten-van-het-voetbal.htm

http://www.vi.nl/WebTV/WebTV-Beste-Johan/168916/Zaakwaarnemers-zijn-de-parasieten-van-het-voetbal.htm

http://soccerbusinessworld.com/uefa/premier-league-clubs-spend-67m-on-agents/

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/football/2752758/Agents-cash-in-to-tune-of-71million.html

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/football/2752758/Agents-cash-in-to-tune-of-71million.html

http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/news/Chelsea-top-the-spending-list-for-agent-fees-as-the-Premier-League-squanders-67m-in-2009-10-article641525.html

http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/news/Chelsea-top-the-spending-list-for-agent-fees-as-the-Premier-League-squanders-67m-in-2009-10-article641525.html

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Regulation+in+the+market+of+sports+agents.+Or+no+regulation+at+all%3F-a0249138219

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Regulation+in+the+market+of+sports+agents.+Or+no+regulation+at+all%3F-a0249138219


Appendix 1 – Survey Results For our research, we did a survey amongst teachers and students of the Alfrink College, to get to know the basic ideas amongst the public concerning this subject. In total, there were 84 responses.

How good is your knowledge about football?

What is, according to you, the role of a sports agent? “Making clubs pay way too much for players so they get more money.” “Guiding players in the football world.” “Not much, it does the administrational part of the footballer, so he gets to focus on the sport itself. The agent is important, however, in the role of negotiating with the players new club. The player still picks his one” “I think it's important to have one. So players have someone with the contacts to move to another good club, see possibilities in their future and help them to sign good deals and not to be fooled.” “They make decisions and discuss issues in meetings.” “To help with transfers and get the best possible contract for a player.” “Searching for clubs where his client can play for and compete with the needs of the client, also they negotiate about financial issues in case of his client.” “Sort of a manager of a football player/team to help the player with for example a transfer to a new club. And help him with his money, advertisements business, sponsors. sort of a manager. But mostly to help in the transfers.” “They are the intermediaries between players and clubs” “To shat on everybody's face.” “I think sport agents are really creepy people... They sell players to other clubs and make profit. If you see that some players changed a club every season, then you must think that sport agents are pushing their clients for a transfer, so the agent can make his own profit on the player. They are going to be rich in a very short time.” How important do you think a player agent is?


Do you think sports agents earn too much money for their activities? As a note: Sports agents earn 5% - 8% per transfer.

“Yes and no. Depends on how big the transfer is. With a transfer of Ronaldo (96 million) the agent got about 5 million euros for one transfer. So in this case, yes they get paid too much. And on a regular basis, they get paid just a bit too much.” “No, because 5% still means that 95% goes to other people. A writing/acting agent takes at least 10%. So, relatively, it's not that much.” “Well no because they do a lot, but sometimes yes because they really do suck out all the money and they make use of the player. for example someone who can develop his skills in Europe but is sent to Qatar by his agent just for the money, now he will stop developping his football skills.” “There is a lot of misunderstanding regarding the work sports agents. People tend to think that they do sit back and relax all day long whilst making money over the back of hard-working sporters. However, they are the ones who make sure that sporters can focus on their profession as optimal as possible and sports agent are also able to arrange deals that are very beneficial for the sporter, because of their business-mentality. So basically sports agents are essential players in the business, especially at the top, where huge amounts of money are circulating and media attention is always present.” “Too much, they are nothing but parasites that attach themselves to tard athletes. If I were a star player, I would assess my value as to what I see comparable players being paid and I would go to the gm and say, give me 10% less than that guy and use the 10% to pay another player to help my cause of winning games. Just think of how much better a team would be if none of the players had agents getting 10%.The team would win a couple more games with higher calibre talent and they would get that 10% back in endorsements etc.” “Yes, because 5% of transfer fee will end up in thousands of Euros in today’s day and age.” “Yes, because they don't do that hard work. It is the player that decides himself and not someone who works for him. Furthermore, sometimes they are not even reliable.” “Yes I certainly think that sports agents earn too much money. When a middleclass football club of the British Premier league buys a football player for around 4 million euro's, than is of this money between the 200.000 and 320.000 euro's for the sport agent.”


Would you like to become a sports agent?

If you would like to have a player agent, would you like a professional one, or a family member?

Would you like to add anything? “The relationship between agent and player should remain business-like.” “For the final question: I don't consider them useless, but I must say that agents are annoying, they take a large portion of the action and yet are important for getting into the business. So I would not like to have one, but I probably would need one, at least in the beginning. Good luck!” “A family member also looks for what is best for you as a person, instead of only looking at the business part. Therefore, I think a family member is better.” “Although I find most of the player agents are more interesting about the money than his client I think they are important for transfers and if those player agents compete with my needs he will be a good help.” “Though I would want a professional player agent, I would want him to earn less than 5%-8% of a transfer deal, as I consider this too much. The reason I would not choose for a family member because that could lead to unwanted conflicts.”


Appendix 2 – Interview Roberto Branco Martins Roberto Branco Martins, president of ProAgent and the EFA, as well as teacher at the University of Amsterdam, where he is teaching Labour

and Sports, was willing to answer a few questions for us.

What did you do before you started working at ProAgent?

Well, I am a jurist from origin. I have finished studying law and then, around eleven years ago when I

had finished my study, I started working at the FBO, which is the Dutch Federation of Professional

Football. While I was working there, quite quickly I started focussing on several international football

rules and the contracts of players, contract negotiation, and so forth. And in that way I kind of

stumbled into the world of football. At that point in time, I used to do a lot of scientific research, for

example a scientific research about international football contracts. Which, by the way, I am still

doing today. As you might know, I am also a professor at the Amsterdam University, where I teach

‘sport and labour’. And well, around six years ago I found ProAgent together with a couple of sports

agents, which is an association which comes up for the interests of the player agents in Holland and

thereafter, around four or five years ago, I joined the EFA, which is the European Football Association.

What exactly is then the difference between EFA and ProAgent, concerning its work?

ProAgent is a national organisation, whilst the EFA is an international organisation. If you compare

my work personally, there is not a lot of difference, I advice player agents about all possible work they

do, but mainly about the difference between clubs concerning the contracts of players, the payment

of so called fees and so forth, and so forth, which is basically everything concerning legislative advice.

And I lead the EFA and ProAgent concerning its policy, organising of the organisation, formulating

viewpoints and organising meetings and events. These are just a few examples.

On your site it says that “ProAgent comes up for the interest of the player agents in the

(inter)national football politics”. What does this mean exactly?

Well, look, you have to see it like this. Before ProAgent had been founded, the sports agents did not

have a voice to defend their interest. In international footbalpolitics you must cope with the FIFA, this

is the world football association, the UEFA, this is the European football association, then you have

the KNVB, this is the national football association and in addition the national law. But in fact, the

sports agents fall inside the scope of the regulations of the FIFA, but on the other side within the

scope of national law. So there are a lot of different laws that go for sports agents, but all, in fact,

very regulated. So what eventually the consequence will be, is that the sports agents have to tolerate

everything. In the past, it occurred once in a while that sports agents would get the blame of

everything, so this seemed the right moment to formulate a response and, next to this, there must be

put more time into thinking about other forms of regulations concerning activities of sports agents

and this is why ProAgent has been founded. And after this EFA has been founded for the international

footballpolitics, imagine that Europe, or the European Commision proposes a new regulation

concerning sports agents, then the EFA, if being the European issues promoter of sports agents,

negotiating with the European Commision about new regulations. Before the foundation of ProAgent

and EFA, this was not ordinary.

The site also refers to the desire to realise a permanent training for sports agents, how must a

sports agent be trained? And which characteristics or qualifications does an agent have to have

after such an education?


We organise for our staff, factually this considers that organise informative afternoons, where we

inform our staff about recent developments in the routine of football. So it is basically keeping the

knowledge of agents up-to-date. Considering the qualifications, in my opinion you have to be a good

creator of a network in any case. In other words, the quality to create an extended network and to

maintain this. This certainly of importance, because when you promote the interest of football

players, it is essential to have a lot of contacts within football clubs. It is also beneficial when you are

socially equipped, so that you can give players the feeling that there won’t be any conflicts. Obviously,

you must be a good negotiator, you must be vigorous and strong, an efficient worker. That kind of

stuff.

And the workshops that you organise, are they focused on improving these qualities as well?

No, not in this extend. It is basically more focused on general knowledge development. So it is a

criteria that the agent is up-to-date about the recent developments.

Can anyone follow these trainings? Or are special diploma’s required?

There is no such as a required diploma to follow the workshops that we organise. But about the

permanent training, this basically says that you must be informed constantly about the recent

developments in and these workshops are only enterable for our members and the employees of our

members.

What is your opinion towards the dismissal of the licences of sports agents?

This is still not certain. In 2012 the FIFA likes to start the procedure of dismissing the licences. They

first planned this in 2011, but this is basically pushed forward in time, because they now like to hear

what other interest promoters think of this, there namely is a lot of criticism towards the plans of

FIFA. I personally think it is a bad thing when they try to dismiss the licences. But I think an

alternative system has to be established to replace this, or at least a system that has the approval of

all the stakeholders. The FIFA intended to dismiss the licences because they thought that there were

loads of agents that were operating without a licence. This is true though. But we think that it is a

necessity to maintain a certain licence system, because than you can maintain at least a certain

quality of sports agents and you can have a system of sanctions. Because imagine when an agent

does something which is not allowed and he does not have a licence, then it is not possible to punish

him in any sort of way. In addition we think it is important to have a certain quality mark, to protect

the football players and the clubs and the transparency of the financial system. But when the FIFA

dismisses every license, then I fear that there will be some vagueness about and that we lose total

control over the players market.

When you think that all agents must have a license, are you also against family members as

agents?

Yes, principally I do, because the fact that being someone’s family member, does not say that you are

capable of executing the promoting of player issues.


In what way do football players have to be approached?

Well, this can occur in different ways, it can be that players approach agents themselves, but it can

also be that players are just recruited by an agent, then a kind of recruiting action takes place. This

will occur in such a way, that agents will approach a football player with the question if they are

already accompanied by an agent or it can be that a player has a discussion with a colleague , like

‘Gee, I like to be accompanied by another player’s agent.’ This is the way it rolls.

Are there sports agents that visit the family of a player then, or something like this, to convince

them?

Yes, these men are obviously scouting. Well, they approach the family and show them what kind of

services they offer. And certainly when the player is relatively young, then they will certainly draw the

family in, so that the parents know what this sports agent has to offer.

From an outdated documentary that we have seen, ‘ZEMBLA: Makelaar in voetballers’, uit 1998,

they question if an agent that wants to obtain a licence, a safeguard has to be payed of 200000 of

Swiss Franc. Is there still a safeguard? When yes, what amount?

No. This doesn’t exist anymore. The regulations are to be found on the FIFA website, when it is not

there you can find it on the FIFA agent regulation.

What is your opinion towards player younger than 16 years old that are approached by sports

agents?

I think this is not a good development actually.

What do you think what must be done against this?

I think that it fits into a bigger system of the counteract against transfers of minorities. You should

basically create a waterproof system. But, this is not easy. This is very tough. Presently, there is said

that sports agents must stop approaching the youthful talents, but obviously, when a player is not

catching the eye of a club, that an agent is not allowed to approach him is one thing. And the second

question will be, ‘how do you have to do it differently?’, this is also just guessing. But anyway, I think

it is annoying that a 15 year old boy is being offered a contract to play for a club and he wants to

negotiate with a club that you cannot have an agent. So, the boy is basically forced to have an illegal

agent to negotiate for him, but this does not look like it is meant this way. So there are some

complications.

Does ProAgent live from subsidies of the KNVB, or of commissions of agents?

Commissions and member contributions of agents and the income of partners.

Do you think that ProAgent is succesfull and that it is fulfilling her objectives? Or do you notice a

lot of trouble?

Slowly there are some changes going on, so I am very satisfied. Now we are even negotiating with the

European Commision and FIFA, or the UEFA, so keeping this in mind we have reached some

objectives. For now, ProAgent is quite a success, indeed.


Do you notice a change in how sports agents compete with eachother, after the founding of

ProAgent? So, is the competition between sports agents increased, decreased or has it stayed the

same?

I think the relationship between the sports agents has improved, because there is now an

organisation which can serve like a kind of catalyst. Imagine that, in the past, there were conflicts

between two of my members, or another sports agent, then they would have solved it themselves,

alone. But now there is an organisation that can act as a kind of mediator. Consequently, more

cooperation has been established between sports agents.

Word has been raised that some football players lose their own authority when they are under

contract of a sports agent. It is possible that it will happen that a player feels not free anymore to

speak up. What is your perspective towards this thesis?

Obviously, there are a lot of sports agents who operate in varied ways. So, it is completely dependent

on the place in the world where it happens. I namely think that in South America, Africa or in Eastern

Europe football players are more dependent on their sports agent, so then there will be more

unreliable agents in the market than here in Western Europe. So I cannot say that the situation is the

same in every part of the world. But in Holland it turns out to be better than in other countries, I think.

I think that people worry too much about certain things and the we in Holland can be satisfied with

the level we are on. Also, I think that in Holland there are not really players that are completely

dependent on their sports agent. I think this is unrealistic.

So there ìs an enormous difference between Dutch sports agents and foreign sports agents?

Well, yes. But also because the system of payment and such can differ. That is hard to say at this

moment, in a short time. But yes, I think that there is quite a big difference in quality indeed, between

the average Dutch sports agent and, for example, an African one. I do not like to generalise, but in

general there is a certain difference in mentality.

Do you notice that certain sports agents can do more for their client with clubs, where they have

created a good relationship with in the past?

Yes, but this is not different in the normal world.

What is your opinion towards the fact that every country has a different exam. distributed by the

national football associations? Is there a difference in difficulty in Holland in comparison with

other countries?

Not really, I think that, concerning difference in difficulty, it is not such a big difference. A lot of

questions are namely given by the FIFA itself. Where I have more trouble with, is that the national

football associations are being the ones who are correcting these exams and that just there too little

to no checking is realised. When you see that in particular countries the graduationrates are, for

instance, 5% and in other countries 100%, then it is not correct. Then you know that something is

going on. So I do not question the difficulty, but I certainly do question the procedure of the correcting

of the exams.


Is it not easier to realise one clear exam, distributed by FIFA?

The exam is clear, but the checking should be done by een objective organisation. Actually, it should

be corrected better. Obviously, I can just say this, but I should not know how you can realise this in

short term basis. I namely think that when you say something, you must be able to back this up with

ideas of how it should be. Considering this, it will just be hard. It is not so easy to organise a few

thousand people dispersed all over the world, I understand this.

Do you think that restrictions have to be established, to decrease the amount of sports agents in

Holland?

Not really restrictions, but I do think that there have to be qualitative limitations, not really

quantitative. The quality has to be good enough to be able to be a sports agent. When this will lead to

a restriction, then it must be like this. I think that we must presume that we deal with a job that copes

with the assistance of talents, players of 16 years or younger. So this are people who are optimistic

and who are from a young age onwards focussing on sports and who has experienced other events in

his development than other boys who are aged the same. In addition, they are in a market which

demands a lot in a physical way, they need some stability. Furthermore there is the fact that there

can be earned a lot of money with the trade of talented players. So, I think that it is of importance for

the protection of football players that it are experienced and knowledgeable agents. This is what I

basically think is the most important.

Is ProAgent a company that has a profit motive, or is it philanthropic? In other words, is making

profit an important goal, or does ProAgent have another profound goal?

We are an association, so we do not make any profit. The intention is to stand up for the interest of

sports agents. When you look at our regulations, which I think are on the Internet, you will find our

objectives and we attempt to achieve them. So we do not have a profit motive.

The KNVB is going to check more severely on sports agents. When a sports agent is violating the

rules, what kind of sanction will apply to this, according to you? Is the KNVB consequent or do

sports agent with a bigger service record avoid sanctions?

The sanctions are to be found on the Internet, but this is most of the time the dismissal of a license or

a fine. These are basically the recorded sanctions. The KNVB is consequent when there is enough

proof to punish a sports agent. So when sometimes someone avoids a punishment, then you cannot

blame them.

Do you notice a lot of demand for the job as a sports agent in Holland?

Yes, illusion reigns that it is easy. It is a kind of boy’s dream, for a lot of people a kind of fairytale-like

story. But in reality this is different, but here is a lot of demand for it, so yes. There are a lot of people

who approach the question ‘How can I become sports agent?’. Here is your answer to the question,

but I like to add a critical note to this. It is not easy to become a sports agent and to actually be active

in this market, where you can earn you own money in an ordinary way.

Our main question is: To what extend are sports agents important in the world of football? Can

you give your opinion, concerning this main question?


Coincidentally, I thought about it today. Some say: ‘You don’t need any sports agents’, but I think it is

extremely important. In the daily practice I see the role of sports agents and it is extremely important.

They are called sports agents, but besides this you can basically say that they are a consultant, estate

agent, basically everything a sports agent can be. I can also say that someone in between two parties

is extremely important. They are extremely important for setting the value of a player, the demand

and supply between clubs, there is always an agent in between this. With the representation of

players, an agent is in between both parties. So they are very important to keep the transfer market

alive. Everyone who is active in this market, like players, clubs and football associations, uses an

agent and that means that they are indissolubly related with this market, at least with professional

football. In the amateur branch this does not count. So that is one thing where they are very

important, to keep the economy alive and to bring together supply and demand, not only with players

and clubs, but also between multiple clubs . But on the other side, what also is very important is the

role of an agent in the career of a player. There are just a few people on this globe that are so

talented that they can find a suited club on their own. But there are always people who recognize

talent and who can guide them in the world of football, this is the role of an agent. Ask yourself,

imagine that you are very talented and you discover this at the playground in the neighborhood, I

don’t know. What should be your first steps you make to get to a football club? Look, you could say, I

become a member of a certain football club, that is fine, but who will bring you to a new club? Who

assists you with the next steps? You will see, that it actually is almost impossible to achieve this on

your own/ So there is basically always someone necessary to help you with this, who assists. So I think

they are extremely important.

We like to thank you for this interview, it is very helpful for our research.

You’re welcome, my apology that is was so tough. Certainly in the time of transfer windows it is very

hectic. You can also take this into account in your research. Boys, a lot of good luck!


Appendix 3 – Interview James Herst A recent member of the FIFA licensed football agents is James G. Herst. He was willing to answer a few questions for our research.

1. What did you do before you started working as a players agent? I am a self employed entrepreneur, mainly in real estate and healthcare business. 2. What exactly made you decide to request a license at the KNVB? Football will always be my number one hobby. I have several friends who work in the world of professional football and they used to ask me for advice many times. Well, from that point in time, I just kind of stumbled in and eventually decided to request a professional license. 3. When you were operating without a license, did you feel that you could do your work properly? If so, why did you request a license? Here is a misunderstanding, because I have never worked as an agent for a player, however I did support football clubs. Nowadays, there are more so called player agents without a license, then there are player agents with a license. The rules of the FIFA are extremely clear about this matter: you cannot officially represent a player during negotiations when you do not have a license. But, there is enough room for exceptions of which many people make use. For example, sworn lawyers do not necessarily need to get their license. So, if you for example represent a player, then you just ask a lawyer to sign the official documents. The FIFA researched this matter and came to the conclusion that only 30% of all the transfers worldwide, were handled by licensed player agents. This is one of the reasons why the FIFA wants to change the system, or even get rid of the system as a whole. Well, I chose to get a license because I aspire to become a serious player in the market of player agents and I think that it is important to be in possession of the necessary licenses. And of course, having a license makes an agent more credible. 3. Do you think that the difficulty of the exam is sufficient? I think that the exams should be more difficult. The more difficult the exam is, the better. This way only high quality will be able to survive the exam. And eventually this raise in quality will improve the quality of our industry. 4.What is your point of view concerning the fact that every country has its own exam? Well, 75% of all the questions at the exam are made by the FIFA. And these questions are the same in every country, whenever they are a member of the FIFA. The other 25% of the questions focus on the national rules and guidelines of the national association where the exam is taken. 5. Could you tell us more about the financial part of football agents? It is possible to earn good money as a football agent. 6. Football agents make their living from the fees they receive whenever a player signs a new contract or transfer. What we wonder, what are the percentages normally? That is different per player agent. The FIFA has set a minimum of 3%, however every player agent has the right to offer their services at a higher percentage, or, which is also possible, at a standard fee which has been agreed upon in advance. I cannot give exact percentages which my colleagues ask, although I do know that the average lies in between 5% and 15%. But, of course, there are always examples that could be found in which ridiculous percentages account. For example, Søren Lerby has an agreement with Ajax Amsterdam, that whenever a youth player stays in Amsterdam at his sixteenth birthday, Lerby receives 40% of the player’s salary. 7. Do you think that players who are younger then sixteen years old, need a football agent?


I think that good guidance could never harm, however I feel that players younger then sixteen years old should be left alone. 8. At this point, there is a lot to do with the football agents. Many people argue that too much money goes to the player agent. Also, people argue that football agents set their priority at cashing quickly, instead of defending the interests of the player. Of course, this matter is nearly impossible to research, since not much information could be found. What is your point of view? Just like in every industry, there are colleagues who have wrong motives for their actions. However, just like you said, there is nearly no evidence or information that could be found. Every news item or article about negotiations, transfer fees, contracts and so forth should therefore not be copied by every football site. Many lies will be spread in that way. 9. Is it possible for a football player to survive as a football player without a player agent? It is obvious that the most important element is quality of the player. Simply said, Cristiano Ronaldo will remain a professional football player for however long he wants to play the game, and however long his physical ability allows him to play at the highest level, because every club in the world would want to make use of the talents of such a talented player. But, a football agent makes sure the interest of the player is defended. Not only the sportive interest, but surely also business and financial interests. 10. You just received your license as a football agent. Do you feel that the industry you work in is a tough one? Yes, it is an extremely tough one. 11. Do you think that you are far behind on football agents with a high status and good service record? If so, what do you think you should do to tie this ‘race’? I sure do. But on the question how, I cannot give an answer due to ongoing negotiations. 12. What do you think about the restrictions of the FIFA per 1/01/2008? Do you have problems with the restrictions? Restrictions are there to keep the market more in control. I do not think the FIFA succeeds. Hence the idea to change the way in which licenses should be received, or even get rid of them. I do not have any problems with the restrictions. 13. Are you planning to go and work at a bureau for football agents, just like Sport-promotion or ProAthlete? And what is the advantage to be a member of these bureaus? I am a real entrepreneur and love to work for myself, so I will not ever be working for an existing bureau. The advantage might be that these bureaus exist longer and therefore are more known and might have a larger network and therefore providing the football agent with more contacts. 14. Most probably you are working at expanding your network and the possible ‘recruitment’ of players. How do you do this? Do you think you are doing just fine, or do you have a lot of difficulties due to the fact that you are a new agent? Due to ongoing negotiation, I cannot answer this question either. 15. How does the process of recruiting players go? Well this process differs a lot every time. Youth players demand a different approach then the seniors demand. Sometimes, even players come to you and ask if you want to guide them. There is no definite answer to this question. 16. What are you planning to do to distinguish yourself from other football agents? I cannot answer this question either at this point in time.


We would like to thank you a lot for this interview and wish you loads of luck. You are welcome, thanks. Goodbye.


Appendix 4 – Interview Jan de Visser Jan de Visser, former professional football player and currently player agent of SP-International was willing to answer a few questions for us

by phone.

General questions

In what way did you enter the world of football agents?

Well, in the time that I was a professional football player, Rodger Linse was my agent. He founded his

own football agency and he asked me at the end of my career, whether I liked to be a sports agent

also. I responded that I had to think about it and eventually I had decided to work as an agent for one

year in practice, allowing me to experience it. I didn’t want to be stuck to something and at first I liked

to see if the job was something for me. Well, eventually I liked it so much, that by now I am working

here for 10 years already.

You said that you liked the job. What do you like about the job?

Well, I am a football player of course, so I am used to this world and I like it a lot. I have got a lot of

contacts and I like to have to do something with football. What also charms me is that I am, simply

said, my own boss. Look, when working as a coach or football player, there are fixed timetables that

you are obliged to keep to. I don’t have fixed timetables. I am allowed to decide for myself when I

work and I like that.

Do you notice, being a former professional football player, that you have a different kind of

contact with football players, than football agents who didn’t act on a professional platform as

football player?

Well, I doubt that I have a different contact. Look, it is true that I, as being a former professional

football player, recognise certain situations better than other agents. There are certain situations

where I can ask myself: ‘What would I have liked?’ And yes, I obviously have more experience with

this profession, but if it really means that I have a better contact with football players… I doubt it.

There are certain people who are very good in this profession, but who never acted on a high platform

as a football player themselves. The same thing counts for football managers. There are enough

managers who didn’t play football on a professional level, but do manage a team on professional

level.

We haven’t found any sources about which players you represent. Can you tell us which football

players you represent?

Yes, amongst others I represent Salomon Kalou (Chelsea, red.), Jonathan the Guzman (Villarreal, red.),

and Glenn Loovens (Celtic, red.). But we represent more or less 40 football players and basically all

the agents of SP-international have contact with these players . But I mainly focus on these players.

Is it a coincidence that all the players you accompany were once under contract with Feyenoord

Rotterdam?

Obviously, it is a fact that I have multiple contacts within Feyenoord, so it makes it easier to enter

Feyenoord. I have played with Glenn Loovens myself, so this helps.


How did you approach these football players? Has the way in which you approach players

changed?

Well, approached… We, as a bureau, guide around forty players, who all act at the highest level and

we try to maintain this amount with an addition of around 1 or 2 players every year. But, whenever

we decide to guide an extra player we must be certain and must be able to say: ‘Look, that is going to

be a great one!’ Most often, the bureau then approaches the players and puts the players under my

guidance. But, in the case of Glenn Loovens… Well, I used to play with him, so that is different. And

regularly it happens that players talk with each other and that the players approach us, because they

see that the players who are under our guidance, make career. So a lot of advertisement for our

agency is made due to daily conversations.

If you should describe your contact with the players, would you describe it as pure business-like, or

do you have a more emotional bond with your players?

Well, I think that you should always have a business-like bond with your players at first. You can’t of

course enter a players house and chat with him like a friend and after that state: ‘Yes, but I am also

going to represent your interest.’ This is not likely. You will first have to create a business-like

relationship with a player. Only after that you can be a more personal contact with a player or a less

personal bond with another player and so you will have a different bond with every player.

Until this moment, we have to conclude in our research that sports agents, as the years in their

profession go by, will earn more. Their income is basically an upward spiral. Can you confirm this?

Well, an upward spiral… That is obviously the case when you start at zero as a football agent. It is not

more than logical that you won’t close deals of the sum of €500,000. But you will profit a lot more

from one player than that you will profit from another player, so it is not quite a fact that when you

are more experienced in the world of football agents, you will automatically earn more money. It is

not how it goes.

When we did some research on SP-International and when we read articles about Rodger Linse, we

noticed that he hasn’t offered contracts to his clients, it is on a matter of trust. Does this count for

you also?

No, we have no players under contract.

When you represent the interests of multiple football players and these players pay their bills over

time, would your income be stable, or does it fluctuate enormously?

You make agreements with clubs. You will obviously get a percentage of the annual salary of a

football player and you make agreements with clubs about this sum. So, concerning this, you will

have your income in your own hands. Obviously, you will have the transfer periods, where you will

earn more money than in other periods of the year. On the other hand, for certain football players

you will already be happy to have found a football club for him, so you wouldn’t expect a commission.

On commissions will be made agreements, separated from the fixed percentage of the annual salary.

Well, if you take Lionel Messi for example: yes: you will get an enormous commission for him, because

clubs are so interested in him. But for other players, you will already be happy for him if he found a

club., so you won’t expect a commission.


Often word has been raised that sports agents don’t work very hard for their income. They say that

they only give their signature and they snatch away an enormously high sum of money. Can tell us

detailed what the process is, concerning a transfer or a contract extension, from preparation until

finalising.

I recognise this image, indeed. Often people think that when Ruud van Nistelrooij moves from

Manchester United to Real Madrid, we are called from Madrid, just give our signature and thereafter

we sent a facture of €6,000,000,-, but it doesn’t go like this at all. We, as sports agents, namely are

constantly calling, constantly trying to get in contact with people. Just to get back on the topic of

Messi: he will sell himself, every is interested in a player like him. But the mass that comes after him,

look, there are for example four really good players who are suited for your time, but as a football

agent you have to try to get your player to this team and this is not as simple as people think. Every

time again we have to chat with the people from the club, letting them know which players we offer

and advising the football players for which football club they have to choose. People bluntly think

that, for example , with the transfer of Jonathan de Guzman from Mallorca to Villarreal, that this just

occurs in a minute, but is not the case. I consists of a long process and there is more to do with this.

But imagine that from the moment that you hear from Real Madrid that they are interested in

Ruud Van Nistelrooij, what are exactly your activities until the definite transfer?

Well, of course the negotiations. And not only the negotiations about the contract and the salary, but

with a player like Van Nistelrooij there is much more to it. In addition, you have to close deals for the

marketing, for the sponsorship and so on. Look, a football player of NAC Breda, you only have to

make a CAO, but for a top player with a name, there is much more to it. We have to deal with

merchandise, sponsor contracts and marketing and all kinds of factors that influence the

negotiations. You pay an agent for his network, basically. Someone who has a lot of contacts can

easier offer players at other clubs.

What are the main costs that a sports agent has?

Travel costs, residence costs and telephone costs.

Who pays you? The club or the player?

In most of the cases the club pays us. The FIFA had set up some regulations, whereby the player has

to pay the agent, but in the Netherlands there is a law that protects the employees of an employer, so

that they don’t have to pay for the costs that a club makes. In this way the regulations won’t count in

a lot of countries.

Do you notice a lot of revulsion against your job? Do you have the feeling that the outside world

has a negative view against you profession, or do you think the media is exaggerate this?

No, I think this is not as bad as you state.


In the last years, there has been a lot of commotion about the fact that football agents approach a

player with the age under 16. What is your vision upon this?

Well, I actually think this is not a good case. Football players who are younger than 16 oughtn’t to be

approached by a football agent. I would like to state that we as an agency will never do this, taking in

consideration that we always question what we can mean for a football player at this young of an

age. In addition, it is very difficult to estimate if a football player of 13 years old will make it to the top

eventually. We namely can do our job if a player is 17 or 18 years old. We think that an agency must

create a bond with the football player, so he will stay as long as possible.

Mr. Roberto Branco Martins told us that it is an inevitable phenomena. Players who are out of

favour at their club, will always search for another club.

Yes, I think that Roberto Branco is totally right about this. Of course, we know them too and

understand that Roberto Branco will be called with the announcement: ‘Hey, I have to leave Ajax, do

you know a suiting club for me?’, but we don’t participate in this, because then you once agree on

this, it will become worse and worse and on a certain moment, boy of 13 years old will be approached

by agencies, who look at his progression and when this is worse than expected, they will dump them.

This is not the way how it works for us. And yes, there Is obviously the problem with the English clubs

who are aiming its arrows on the Dutch football academies. Football players in the Netherlands are

not allowed to sign a contract before they reach the age of 16, but English clubs will approach them

anyway. Obviously, you want an agent then, who analyses the contract and stuff. There are so many

more football agents nowadays, so that everything will shift. New agents will already approach 15

year-olds, even 13 year-olds. Often, these agents will make these boy promises, which they are not

capable of fulfilling. They promise unrealistic things.

Football players can better have a licensed football agent than a family member. Can you give your

opinion about this thesis?

I totally agree with this statement. Look, you have to keep your business separated from your family

and this also counts for this case. All will be very nice when your uncle, a taxi driver, is willing to

represent your interests and when you are confident of this, you certainly have to do this, but I think

that, if you want to become a professional, you have to build a team of professional people around

you. Imagine, you are offered you first contract by Ajax… Your uncle isn’t aware at all about what the

average salary of a player of your age at Ajax is, so it is way more likely that he will be satisfied with

much less. In addition, the chance is small that your uncle will negotiate with Ajax. You have to have

an enormous network, when being a sports agent. Often these small agents won’t even get around

the table with a closed club as Ajax. And you have to be honest, you also wouldn’t let your mother fill

in your taxes forms. You will let this be done by a tax consultant. It is important that someone does

business, where he or she really has knowledge about. It will always stay their choice to choose who

their agent will be, of course.

In this way you will play for a buck per month, so to speak?

Exactly! And you will sit in the changing-room and you come across that your teammates earn way

more money than you do. Great negotiations of your uncle!


Benefits of Agencies

You are a member of ProAgent. Do you think this gives you a lot of advantages, being a football

agent? If so, which?

Well, not really actually. Look, with all due respect, I respect the way Roberto Branco works. He puts

his whole heart and soul into this project. Even though, I think that it eventually won’t work. When,

as being a higher office, we don’t have a voice anyway. And, when being honest, a won’t be lying

awake for a second.

You work with SP-International. What benefits does this give to you, being an agent?

No, also not much. I don’t notice any advantages. I think that almost every football agent has am

agency., so this doesn’t separate us from the other agents.

Don’t you notice a sort of brand that you take with you, either?

Well, this can be yes. It is this way, that when a football player sees that players from our agency

build up a nice career and so having success, so concerning this, you have a certain advantage.

Football players also find it interesting that football players who joined of SP-International , have a

high reputation. Then they also like to join our agency.

History

Did you to like to become a football agent, in the time that you were a professional football

player?

Yes, actually I did… It is not the case that I wanted to be a football agent in the time that I was a

young kid, but when I was asked by Rodger Linse ten years ago, if I wanted to work with him, I have

thought about it. That was in the time that I was a professional football player. Thereafter I have tried

it for a year. And now I am working here for ten years already.

Do you notice that the way in which football players look at you, has changed over time?

No not really.

Did you have a good relationship with your football agent, in the time that you were a professional

football player?

That was Rodger, so really good. That is why he approached me to work at SP-International at the en

of my career.

Have the activities of Rodger Linse, when he was your football agent, changed in comparison to the

activities that you execute nowadays?

In that time, everything was still a lot more peaceful. The whole market has become a lot more hectic

over time and that brings a lot of business.

We would like to ask you a somewhat rude question. We are sorry for that. Can you please give us

a link to a professional football player? We namely need an interview with a player, but this is

difficult to realise. An email address is also sufficient.


You like to have an interview with a professional football player? Uhm, that is not quite a problem. I

only have to think about who suits the most. I will come back to this.

We like to thank you for your participation to our research. You were very beneficial to our

research.

No problem and we stay in touch.


Appendix 5 – Interview Chris Rog Chris Rog, Alfrink College student and football player of professional football club ADO Den Haag, was willing to answer a few questions by

mail for our research.

1. What is your current professional football club? ADO Den Haag, Under 17. 2. For how many years have you been playing at ADO Den Haag? For three years by now. 3. During these three years, have you ever been approached by a player agent? No, not yet. That is because I do not yet have the legal age to be approached, because you could only be approached officially when you’re sixteen years old. 4. Did you ever approach a player agent? No, I never felt the urge to. This is because I want to concentrate completely at playing football and therefore I have never even considered approaching a player agent. 5. Would you then like to have a player agent? Yes, I would like to have one, because a player agent is able to arrange a lot of things for you. 6. Would you prefer a licensed player agent, or a family member? Why? I would prefer a licensed player agent, because he has got a lot of good contacts. 7. Does ADO Den Haag pay a lot of attention to inform youth players about player agents? Well, what is a lot? We do get a lot of information one evening annually. 8. Do players in your team already have a player agent? No, none of them. 9. Are the player agents who guide the players at ADO Den Haag player agents of a big agency? I am not that familiar within ADO Den Haag with all the player agencies, but I could imagine that most players have an agent from VVCS, who focuses at ADO Den Haag. 10. What do you find most important in a player agent if you would have a professional career in the future? A player agent with a lot of good contacts, or a player agent with whom you have a good (personal) contact? The ideal player agent for me, would be a mix of both. 11. Do you think it is fair that player agents tend to get an average of 5% - 8% of the transfer fee as a commission? Well, that depends by what means they have helped to increase the loan of the player or in what way they contributed to the transfer. 12. What is your opinion concerning the following statement: ‘Approaching players younger than sixteen years old is wrong.’ I indeed think that players who are younger than sixteen years old are too young to be kept busy with things like money. They should just be playing football.


13. What is your opinion concerning the following statement: ‘Player agents are only concerning about quick money.’ Well, I think some of the player agents do only concentrate on making quick money, but there are a lot of good ones, too. It just depends on the player agent. 14. What is your opinion about a player agent in general? It is a convenient phenomena, however I think that players should have all their own business straight and a player agent should be considered as a luxury, as an extra in your career. 15. Do player agents ruin of improve the world of professional football? Or is this a mix of both? I think it is a mix of both, because there are different player agents. Some of them improve the market, others ruin it. 16. Are there player agents who are put forward to you by the club ADO as a potential player agent? Not that I am aware of. Is there something you would like to add? Player agents are important for everything around the game of football, for example your loan and the club you’re playing for. And also, whenever someone would like to approach a player, he should first contact the player agent, so a player agent would also provide the player with more rest.


Appendix 6 – Interview Chris Tolman Chris Tolman, Alfrink College student and football player at the professional football club Sparta Rotterdam, was also willing to fill in our

questions by mail.

1. What is your current professional football club? Sparta Rotterdam, under 17. 2. For how many years have you been playing at Sparta Rotterdam? This is my fourth year. 3. During these three years, have you ever been approached by a player agent? No, never. 4. Did you ever approach a player agent? Also never. 5. Would you then like to have a player agent? Yes, of course. 6. Would you prefer a licensed player agent, or a family member? Why? I would prefer a licensed player agent, because he knows more about it and knows more about the profession. 7. Does Sparta Rotterdam pay a lot of attention to inform youth players about player agents? No, not really. 8. Do players in your team already have a player agent? No, none of them. 9. Are the player agents who guide the players at Sparta Rotterdam player agents of a big agency? I do not know, actually. What are the opinions of players at the club about player agents? That differs a lot. Some of them are satisfied, however others are already disappointed in their player agent. 10. What do you find most important in a player agent if you would have a professional career in the future? A player agent with a lot of good contacts, or a player agent with whom you have a good (personal) contact? A player agent with whom I have a good contact, because only then you can assure you could trust the player agent. 11. Do you think it is fair that player agents tend to get an average of 5% - 8% of the transfer fee as a commission? It is a bit exaggerated, I would find it better when they earn a little bit less. 12. What is your opinion concerning the following statement: ‘Approaching players younger than sixteen years old is wrong.’ I do not think so. Players should decide for themselves what they do when they are approached by a player agent. I think it is never wrong when a player is approached by a player agent.


13. What is your opinion concerning the following statement: ‘Player agents are only concerning about quick money.’ You have got both types. Some of them indeed only concentrate on quick money, but others are more interested in the growth of the player. 14. What is your opinion about a player agent in general? Well, it is quite convenient for the player as well as the club that there is an intermediary and that someone is able to help with the negotiations. 15. Do player agents ruin or improve the world of professional football? Or is this a mix of both? That depends on the goal the player agent has got in mind. Therefore, it is a mix of both. 16. Are there player agents who are put forward to you by your club as a potential player agent? Not that I am aware of. Is there something you would like to add? Sorry, nothing.


Appendix 7 – Interview Richard Thannhauser Richard Thannhauser is the manager of general affairs and media of Go Ahead Eagles. He was willing to answer a few questions for our investigation by mail.

The experiences of Go Ahead Eagles with player agents (positively, as well as negatively). Overall, Go Ahead Eagles has got positive experiences concerning player agents. We only work together with licensed player agents, so therefore we got specific agreements internally about the commissions we pay, which are advised to us by the FBO and the KNVB. The points of view of Go Ahead Eagles concerning player agents (Whether or not they play an important role) Player agents have got big networks, generally spoken, but of course we as the club determine which players we would like to have and which players are not suited. Whenever a player is contracted, the club gets the player agent with the player together. But, we determine our strategy concerning the contracts and when the player agent is not willing to cooperate or give in to our strategies, then there will be no contract for the player he is guiding. Whether or not Go Ahead Eagles thinks it is important to inform their youth players about player agents. Go Ahead Eagles has got no youth department any longer, since our youth department has fused into the department of FC Twente, called RJO. FC Twente is fully responsible for all the guidance for the player. Therefore, this question is not of interest for us.

We would like to thank you for your cooperation. You’re welcome and good luck.


Appendix 8 - Interview Mischa Rook General manager of professional football club FC Oss.

1. What are the experiences of FC OSS concerning football agents? Well, they are quite good actually. We have skipped a year of professional football with our relegation to the ‘Topklasse’. I have been responsible for the transfers since two years so I have dealt a lot with player agents. I have player fourteen years of professional football myself, so I’ve known some of them from personal experiences and I have had player agents myself. But nowadays, I’m on the other side of the table. Last year, in the ‘Topklasse’, we did not have to deal a lot with them, but of course now we are back in the ‘Jupiler League’, we do. To my concern, the players who make use of player agents are fifty-fifty. The elder players do not make use of them a lot, but the younger players feel that they should get advice from experts. The salaries at our team are at a certain level that you do not speak about enormously high amounts of money, so not the amounts you read a lot about in the papers, when transfers by Ajax Amsterdam or Real Madrid are done. So our experiences... Yes, I think it is clever of the players to get advice from experts. But, an issue is of course that the clubs need to pay the agents. It is quite weird of course when you’re negotiating with a player, which is the story of the chicken and the egg. If you’d ask a player: ‘What would you like to earn?’, most of them would respond by saying: ‘What can I earn?’. So sometimes the player takes the first step but at other times, the clubs take the first step. But, it is convenient to know beforehand whether or not a player makes use of an agent. Why is that? Well, simply because the player agent needs to be paid by the club, because it is said so by law. If I know beforehand that a player makes use of an agent, then I’m extremely transparent and I cut their salary from my budget. Let’s assume that I’ve got a budget of 12.000 Euro’s per month and one players earn one-twelfth of this per month. He’d earn a thousand per month. But, when I find out that we also need to pay the agent, the salary would drop to, for example, 950 Euro’s a month. It is extremely simple. I got a budget with which I need to get player X to my club. If he feels the urge to get advice from an agent, part of his salary would go his player agent. What happens a lot, unfortunately, is that we have three or four conversations with a certain player and eventually this player tells us: ‘Yeah, but I did get help from an agent.’ That’s irritating. It would be a lot better when this player had told us from the start, because eventually the player will pay his agent due to the drop in his salary. Because in fact, the player would otherwise lets us pay the advice he gets, but we are simply not going to pay that. Juridical, it is quite difficult, due to the WAADI-law, which states that the employer needs to pay the costs made to provide his employee with advice. Of course, employers are not happy with this law. At our team, you would talk about tens of Euro’s, maybe a few hundred but in the case of Heracles Almelo, or other Eredivisie-teams, you start talking about thousands of Euro’s. There is the point of discussion. Because, this player negotiates a deal for three years, a player agent does his work once; he reads through all the documents, ordered by the employee and he gets his fee. Fair enough. However, in year two and three, another invoice lies upon your desk to pay to the player agent for the work he’s done in year one. And due to this, a lot of money disappears into the pockets of player agents which are meant to be for players themselves. 2. Does it happen often that a player says that he has a player agent after three or four conversations? I did come across that a few times, yes. We did not research it whatsoever, though. We have fot a totally new team, so you talk about twenty to twenty-five players and my feeling says that about one at three players came to me after three or four conversations with the remark: ‘By the way, I do make use of a player agent.’ That’s why I often say at the beginning: ‘Do you make use of a player agent? If so, great that you chose to be advised by an expert.’ I do want them to say it from the start. As far as I am concerned, this is done justly. Whenever I want to be advised by a lawyer, then I need to pay this lawyer myself as well. Therefore, I do not agree with the juridical agreements and I am certainly not the only one.


3. In the Premier League, the player agent costs are put upon the payslip. Do you think that this should happen in the Netherlands as well? I think it is wise to be more transparent, indeed. Especially when international transfers are involved. We’ve got three foreign players under contract ourselves, A Belgian player, a German player and a Slovakian player. It is quite intensive work. A lot of papers have to be checked and filled in and that is just in the Jupiler League. Let alone when big international transfers are concerned, you’d be talking about a lot more money and a lot more paperwork. Recently, the FIFA has introduced a new digital system in which everything needs to be filled in. For example, you need to fill in whether or not you made use of a player agent, what his activities were, whether or not you paid for this activities, what you have paid, and so forth. This provides a certain amount of transparency towards the FIFA and that is a positive event. It makes it harder to do illegal stuff. Eventually, transfers should be in the benefit of the players as well as the clubs and not in the benefit of the player agents. They would rather see, for example, Cristiano Ronaldo transfer every single year to a different club in order to get the maximum amount of fees. When Ronaldo would stay with his club these six years, he would get fewer fee. 4. Has the relationship with player agents changed over the years? No, not at all. What I already told you, I have played fourteen years of professional football myself: three years at Eredivisie level and eleven at Jupiler League level and therefore I have been confronted with player agents myself as well and I can tell you: they have not changed a thing. Look, there are a lot of good player agents, who are really transparent and invest in the interest of the career of the player, however there are also a lot of bad ones who only work in the interest of themselves. They are mainly waiting for that one jackpot. I did not encounter this myself, however, but the following happens a lot. Two clubs are interested in a certain player. Then the fair deal would be that the player would say: ‘I would like to play at team Y, because they have the best accommodations, the best trainer and a beautiful city. But, what happens a lot in reality, is that one of the two teams offers the player agents a lot more money and say to this agent: ‘If you convince your player to play at my team, this fee is all yours.’ In that case, a lot of player agents tend to work in their own interest and tend to say to the player: ‘The trainer of team Z definitely sees a core player in you, he would love to have you on the team. It is in your best interest to play at team Z.’ I do not have any problems whenever I call a player agent and ask him: ‘would you be so kind as to find my a striker?’, and he comes back with a striker and a cheque. What happens a lot nowadays, though, is that you call up a player, he’d love to play at your team, and the player agent calls you up saying he demands a certain amount of money as a fee. That’s frustrating. 5. Are there player agents with whom you do more business, because you’ve known them longer, for example? Yeah, that happens. We do not necessarily have a home agent, but it is a small world. Eventually, it all comes down to networking. If you have a certain contact with a player agent because you’ve known him for a long time, because you have, for example, player with him in an amateur football team, contacts are easily made. Especially when you do not know a player agent, or he has betrayed you once in the past, you do not make contact with him easily. Whenever you have been betrayed in the past, you start thinking twice before doing business with this agent. But, we do tend to rather do business with player agents who tend to work in favour of their client. Unless a certain player who is extremely interesting to us, is with a dreadful player agent; then we do not have a choice. You just have to pay close attention in order to not get betrayed. 6. Is it possible for the professional football market to operate without player agents? Yes, it could operate without them. You just need advice as a player, but what exactly is a player agent? Robin van Persie and Arjen Robben get advice from their fathers and call them player agents. But whenever you start acting at a top level, you need advice. But, whether you get this from a lawyer, a jurist or a fiscal, that does not matter. But also, when you just start playing professional


football and you do not have any contacts in the professional football world whatsoever, you need to get advice. That is exactly the same as in the ‘normal’ world. Whenever I need a lawyer, a pay him by the hour and sometimes the amounts they ask are ridiculously high, but they are the experts at their area. Unfortunately, the football market tends to be marked by excessive amounts of money. 7. Does FC Oss think it is necessary to inform their youth players in an early stage? Absolutely. Officially, player agents may not approach players under the age of sixteen, but in reality... Whenever you look at a youth match of Feyenoord, Ajax of PSV, you see loads and loads of player agents at the sideline, trying to approach the players. The problem is: whenever you do not approach the player, another one does. Everybody thinks in commercial matters. What the age boundaries are, is hard to say. But, the most important part is a player’s environment, and especially the parents. An example: when your father is a tram conductor, and earns some hundreds a month, and you have an exceptional talent for player football and you could earn ten times the amount your father earns, it is hard to refuse. You need to be mentally extremely strong and I couldn’t blame you for accepting the offer. But, the more stable your environment, the less likely you are to accept the offer. I just read an interesting article about Cor Pot, coach of the Dutch national team under-21. That is a crucial age. These youngsters are about to become a millionaire and how are they handling this situation? A lot of them handle it well, however there are some examples of youngsters who do not handle it well at all. 8. What do you think of the ideas of the FIFA to let go of licenses for player agents? Well, that is hard to say. I do not have an outspoken opinion about that. But I am in favour of transparency. A license does not say a lot, though; we are extremely strict in the Netherlands, but when you’d fail here, you would just drive to another country and get it here. So the way it goes now, is not the right way. But, when you let go of licenses, the first person who comes to you to help you, could claim he is an expert. The market might change in a cowboy-like world. So I find it hard to say anything usual about this; no opinion. 9. Due to the Financial crisis, do you think that the costs of player agents is an important cost in which a club is able to cut? I think that the levelling of the salaries of the players is already moving towards a more acceptable level, which fits the image. A few years ago, a lot of clubs thought that the sky was the limit, which was not good for the market at all. Some players earn way too much money because of it and some clubs were on the verge of bankruptcy due to mismanagement and had to beg for money at the local government. Unfortunately, this still happens nowadays. But we do see a change. And this is not only due to the player agents; the salaries fall and therefore the fees fall. Their income goes hand-in-hand actually. 10. An example of this, is again the Premier League. In contrast to other top teams in this league, Manchester United spends relatively few on player agents. You need to watch out on this one! The Premier League is of course the main league of the world. No league in the world gets so much attention as the Premier League does. So, whatever happens in the Premier League is something unique. So, a comparison between the Jupiler League and the Premier League can never be made. No example of the Premier League could be applied to our league. But I do watch the fees we pay to player agents. Absolutely. But, we pay minimal amounts so we are not interesting to agents whatsoever. But, every Euro we spend on player agents is one Euro too much, in my opinion. 11. There is a lot of criticism on player agents nowadays. What do you think that should happen to move the power from agents back to the clubs and players again? That is a hard one. When you would get the agents away, the clubs would get all the power and might abuse it. But, I do think that there should be better rules between players and clubs and an


agent should never interfere, because they are just advisory. But, because of the large amounts of money, we are dealing with this problem. Yet again, salaries are dropping and therefore the fees are dropping as well, so becoming a player agent is starting to become less and less interesting. In the past, many people said: ‘I want to become a player agent, do a big deal and never have to work a single day in my life.’ The voices I hear around me are completely different; it does not work like this anymore. The powers will therefore decline. But, the clubs pay the agents themselves, so they are still as much guilty to the problem as the agents are. Thanks a lot for this interview! Good luck!


Appendix 9 - Interview Tom Knipping Journalist of the Voetbal International, specialized in economic affairs in the market of professional football.

You asked us why we have chosen this subject, but why do you specialize in the subject football

and sports agents, within ‘Voetbal International’?

That was not so many years ago indeed, actually, we were mainly busy with visiting football matches

and interviewing football players when I came to ‘VI’ and I have researched PSV for four to five years,

in the period if Guus Hiddink. Well, we focused mainly with visiting trainings and visiting football

matches and interviewing of the players. And my colleague, Iwan van Duren, did exactly the same,

but then within AZ. A couple of years after that we had both something like ‘We could continue

interviewing players for years, but on the background we also saw that, behind the scenes, an

enormous cash flow occurred. So we had something like ‘that has become such a big business,

abnormal’. In the past it was just a game, a sport, but now it has actually become a sort of own

economy and there is actually not much written about this, at least not in the Netherlands, the

English quality newspapers do this and in America they do this already for a long time, but in the

Netherlands there was actually almost no payed to this in the football sector, so we had something

like ‘well, maybe we can try to specialize on this’ and we have done this and not only for player

agents, but also for player transfers, the building of stadiums, the financial position of the clubs, etc.,

etc. And then we basically started to write more about what happens behind the scenes, what

happens there and I obviously get more tips, you learn more about the world every time and so we

regularly came across stories about agents, therefore there is so much written about them, because it

is a hot item, also within the FIFA and UEFA, so actually, our specialism is in big lines ‘football

economics’, but it frequently is about agents.

So you know basically the biggest part of football economics, you know a lot about this and within

this you specialize in the agents?

Yes, exactly, what basically happens is, we are mainly writing about agents. I think it has been two

years now, when we understood from our sources that the FIFA had plans to dismiss the licenses for

agents and at that moment we were more focusing on that subject. And you get all sorts of dialogues

about the agency and we asked the agents about what they thought of that and in this way we will

always find new stories.

Further in this interview we like to get back on licenses, but firstly we like to know what your

opinion is towards the negative image that the outside world sketches on sports agents?

I am not really agreeing that the outside world sketches a negative image, because it mainly is

backed up with facts and let us be honest, between all the agents of Holland, there are also a lot of

honest and trustworthy people, but yes, you always have to sketch a general image and this is based

on the unrest created by the European Commission, maybe you have already read this on the website

of the European Commission, on a certain moment they have done research on sports agents and this

concluded that they actually earn exceptionally much money and they also executed a survey on a

large group of supporters and this concluded that there was a very negative view upon agents. It also

said that agents earned double, because the player doesn’t know if he worked for him or the club. In

addition it said that a couple of agents were not trustworthy and that the thought the commissions

were too high. So this all is linked to the research of the European Commission. Next to this you

obviously have the clubs, who have a big problem with a lot of agents that are busy with young


children, that they already are present at youth matches of players of 13,14,15 years old and

approaching them and offering them presents, such as a Playstation or a scooter and tickets for the

parents, when they for example come from a foreign country. The clubs suffer from this and there are

examples of this, so because of this the agency have gotten a negative image from the outside world,

but actually this is mainly because of themselves.

And the research of the European Commision, is this also to be found on Internet?

Yes, you can find it on the website of the European Commission. You can find it there in English and

their research on sports agents and in general terms, agents in cycling, basketball, but mainly on

football, because the most agents are active there. And a different reason why this research has

gotten a negative sound is because of the big shots, Rob Jansen, Mino Raiola, Kees Ploegsma, they

exactly know how this world works. In a certain time, there will be gold seekers who thought easy

money could be earned here and they also like to become an agent. There is an exam for this, where

they have to answer 20 multiple choice questions and when you have 14 right answers, you are

officially an agent. In this way you get people without knowledge about this subject and without an

education in this world. These people do the craziest tricks to reel in money, with all its consequences.

You can notice that there are cases, arbitral cases from gold seekers, who try to earn easy and fast

money with players. On a certain moment, this occurred so often, that the whole agency was to be

seen as dogs, in which a general view has been created, where all agents are bad. Obviously, this is

not true, but you can say that this employment group has troubles, when there are a lot of image

issues. This is not so easy to be solved.

In this way, Johan Derksen, you obviously know him, called them the parasites of football.

Yes, because they withdraw a lot of money out of the world of football. When Chelsea buys a transfer

sum to PSV, then the money stays in the world of football. But when 2 million has to be payed to an

agent then, then it disappears in the pockets of an agent and this will appear on the private bank

account. And in this way you profit from the large sums of money that are situated in the world of

football. And they are capable of suppress the clubs, when you like to have a good player, then you

are almost obliged to pay the agent a high bonus, because then he will say that he could bring this

player to another club. Then they are willing to pay 1 million. El Hamdaoui was a great example in the

end of August, with Udinese in Italy. The owner of Udinese flew to Belgium to negotiate with Sigi

Lens, the agent of El Hamdaoui. Sigi Lens claimed 1 million Euros in this negotiations, next to a

enormous salary for El Hamdaoui, otherwise the deal wouldn’t be closed. Eventually, the president of

Udinese came back to his offer and said he didn’t want to do it, with the consequence that now El

Hamdoui is playing for Ajax B. A lot of agents think that after one deal, you become financially

independent. This kind of examples are causing this image.

So you think that 1 million Euros isn’t fair for the service that Sigi Lens is executing?

No, because what he has to do for this is negotiating with Udinese, flying back and forth a couple of

times and checking the contract and this is basically what you have to do for such a deal. So the 1

million Euros that has to be paid by Udinese is strange. Certainly when looking at the guidelines of the

FIFA, saying that you get already more or less than 5% of the loan of the player. When you close of a

contract as an agent, then you will get a commission of the club.


You now take the example of El Hamdaoui, but do you think that sports agents receive too much

money for their activities in general?

From the report of the European Commission, well, you can better look at a more recent example. The

Premier League publishes an agent fee report, in the last transferwindow, the agents would have

made a small 100 million Euros for their services. These are obviously enormous sums. When you look

at it in general, the sums are in the 100 millions of Euros for accompanying football player, which the

clubs will lose.

Do you know what approximately a Dutch top club spends on sports agents?

This is very difficult to discover. You can keep the guideline of about 5% of a loan that clubs pay. In

reality this is always a lot more, for example, in the Netherlands the transfer of Sulejmani, where Ajax

paid a commission of 1,65 million Euros already. What he factually had to do for this is executing a

couple of telephone calls. So you can research what a full squad will cost, that will cost millions of

Euros per year to agents. But the exact figure for the Eredivisie is not to be estimated, although we

have asked for it with the KNVB. We nagged for it. The KNVB likes to have it just as they do it in

England. In England they publish how much they spend on agents, they proposed this to the clubs.

The clubs didn’t like to go this far, but they do have agreed upon the idea to publish the total amount

that the clubs spend on agents together in a year. You could ask the KNVB if this figure is already

estimated. So they will publish how much the Eredivisie expend on agents last season.

Do you think that a player loses its own authority when he has an agent, keeping in mind the

example of El Hamdaoui?

The problem is that the player trusts its agent completely. Eventually it is often very young players, so

19, 20 years old, maybe in the early 20’s. They are obviously easier to be persuaded than a man of 45.

Often such a player blindly trusts its agent, so that not the player, but the agent decides to which club

the player will go. There are also player agents who have a really good relationship with clubs, so

they shift their players between the same clubs each time. For example look at Slobodan Rajkovic,

who first played for Vitesse. In the meantime he played in the Netherlands for PSV, FC Twente and

Vitesse and now plays in Portugal, but still is the possession of Chelsea. Such a player of Chelsea will

always be placed at the same satellite club, so that a player as Rajkovic will already have played for 5

or 6 clubs at the age of 22. He wouldn’t have planned this all by himself, this will all be arranged by

the manager, who knows these clubs very well.

What are in your eyes the most important characteristics of a sports agent?

The characteristics that a sports agents, in my eyes, must have are that he must look at future, the

long term, of a player and also keeps in mind the interest of the Dutch football, where he earns his

money nonetheless. What you now see with agents is that they move 14 or 15 year old players to

foreign clubs, where it is much better for them to develop themselves on a sportive basis in the

Netherlands. Take Jeffrey Bruma, who moved at a young age from Feyenoord to Chelsea, who is

almost in the Dutch national squad. He played almost no game for Chelsea. If he would have stayed

with Feyenoord, he maybe would have played 100 Eredivisie matches and this could be much better

for his development. A sports agent often chooses for the easy money that can be earned, rather than

look at the long term of his players. The same happened with Castaignos of Feyenoord. Castaignos

played quite good for the first squad of Feyenoord, but then goes to Italy on one of the fist moments

that he can cash, of course under pressure of his agent. When he would have stayed 1 or 2 years


longer in Rotterdam, then he could also have made this step, maybe with the option of other clubs

and he could already have been in the national squad. Agents do have to look at the long term of

their players and have to keep an eye on the interest of the Dutch football.

What grabs our attention is that a lot of players of Feyenoord are leaving at an early age, does also

the club Feyenoord make mistakes? Don’t they treat their talents well enough?

Feyenoord obviously had a very talented football academy. But you may not be mistaken in the

mechanism that occurs in the dressing room. For example, earlier this year, Nathan Aké moved from

Feyenoord to Chelsea. When he was 14 he already could move to certain English clubs. When such an

offer has been made, the boys are obviously talking about it in the dressing room. Everbody is

exaggerating about the offers they have been made, what they are going to earn, what their parents

are going to earn. On a certain moment, everybody wants to leave, certainly, on the moment that

Feyenoord wasn’t a real top club anymore. When you then can make a move to an English top club

and you can make more money, than it is obviously understandable. Their agent will sketch this much

better than it is and the clubs can’t do much about this. Actually, you can’t do anything about it,

because when you offer a player of 14 such a contract and offering their parents a job, then you can’t

do anything as a club, there is no money to do this, so basically this is unfair concurrence. You can say

that staying in the Netherlands is on long terms much better, but it won’t help anymore. When they

do have a surety of this fast money, then they often choose for this. A club is basically powerless.

Do you think that a player can’t make it to the international top, when they aren’t accompanied by

a player agent?

Yes, this is true, because player agents have the power. They have contacts with great technical

directors of clubs, so when they need a top player, this director first calls to a good agent, who after

this closes off the deal. So when you don’t have a player agent, it will be hard to reach the top.

In your perspective, is there a big difference between Dutch agents and agents from foreign

countries, concerning quality?

Well, mainly in comparison with the African countries. In general, everything is arranged quite well in

the Netherlands. We have our own trade unions for player agents. When you look at Africa, you can

speak of slavery or how you like to call it. All the African boy only have one dream, becoming a

professional football player, in order to feed your family. It often occurred, that a great football player

was offered a contract with an agent, where they make themselves possession of the agent and when

they make it as a football player in Europe, they can earn 100000 Euros and the rest will be for the

agent. When they want to break the contract, they have to pay a fine of an astronomically high

amount. In this way, the agent will always lead. For example, an agent offers 20 or 30 people a

contract. He will put these players on a plane to, for example, Paris. He will make these players follow

internships, with the hope that one will get a professional contract. When one of these players makes

it, then the agent profits, because often the player will earn 500000 Euros, so then the player gets

100000 Euros and the agent will get the rest, 400000 Euros. The players who don’t make it, will be

neglected. Not even a ticket back will be arranged, so these people will end up in the criminal circuit.

In Paris you even have special host centers, where all these African players who don’t have shelter

and no money to go back, will be given shelter. They together have created a team, who ask amateur

clubs or professional clubs to practice. A couple of researches have pointed out that there are

thousands of such Africans living in a box under the bridge. It are sad stories, on the other hand, they


have seen these contracts themselves. This is a reason why we try to keep writing about this. A player

last year said, who also was a victim of this situation, encourages us to write more about this. There

are more people than only the man on the streetlamp, who you sometimes see on Studio Sport.

Behind the scenes there is a whole slave-trade going on, where is not a lot written about. He hopes

that we also will focus on this.

We now like to ask you something about the licenses. We like to know the purpose of a license for

player agents, while it is still quite confusing, because the KNVB hasn’t reacted yet.

When you like to close off a contract in the Netherlands, for a player or a club, you can do this in a

couple of ways. First you can do this if you are direct family of the player, father mother or a brother.

Then you can serve for this player. Or you are a lawyer, then you also can close off a contract for a

player. At last you can have a agent license, of the KNVB, then you also can close off deals. When you

don’t have a license or you aren’t an lawyer or you aren’t a direct family member, then the contract is

not official. You can receive this license by making an exam. In every country in the world, 2 times per

year, an exam will be held, which contains 15 questions of the FIFA and 5 questions of the national

football agencies. The questions are multiple choice and most of the time you have to have 13 or 14

questions correct, which depends on your exam. When having these correct, you will have your agent

license. In the Netherlands there are 118 or 120 licensed agents and 6000 worldwide.

Do you think that these licenses are unnecessary, while there are a lot of agents in the Netherlands

who function without a license?

What nowadays indeed have a lot is that there are a lot of agents without a license. When there a

contract has to be closed off, they will call a lawyer or someone who does have a license, therefore

the deal is totally legal. In this way the license doesn’t have a function and this is exactly the reason

why the FIFA likes to dismiss them. They have keep in mind the bad image of agents and they see that

the license system doesn’t work, so they like to dismiss them. I think that it isn’t so good to do this,

because when you don’t have any license, you can’t check anything anymore. So I think that the idea

of the license is quite good, but the KNVB and the other associations have to check these agents way

better and punish them. They don’t do this, so in this way they make their own license unnecessary.

The last years we have had a couple of examples of agents with a license that are active with children

younger than 16, there has been published a photo in the newspapers, so there is some evidence, but

eventually the KNVB is not able to punish these licensed agents or give very low fines. When the KNVB

checks in this way, then the license is unnecessary.

You are obviously talking about Daan Kramp?

Yes, that’s one of the examples that we have.

Is the FIFA really able to dismiss the licenses, in your view?

The expectance is that the KNVB, so the change of a license system to something that replaces it, will

continue. In November there is a big conference, between the football agencies and the agents. The

expectance is that in July 2012, at the yearly conference of FIFA, that the dismissal of the licenses will

become definite. So it will almost certainly continue.


In what way will the work of an agent changes, when the license system will be dismissed?

I think very little, because now we have licenses, but there isn’t any checking upon this, because the

KNVB has never punished an agent. In a moment, the licenses will be dismissed and then there will be

no checking at all and then everybody can execute this job. So I expect that the problems will be even

worse, because every form of checking will disappear. When you like to be a sport agent, you can

start off immediately. The same counts for me. Obviously, the ‘good’ agents are against this, because

they do already have a lot of unfair competition, but this will even expand in the future. For them it

will be more difficult to keep their clients.

This is one of the reasons why ProAgent has been found. We also talked about licenses with

Roberto Branco Martins, the director of ProAgent. They talked about another system, keeping the

license to maintain the watermark for player agents. What kind of system do you think that is best

to be introduced?

That’s a difficult question. In my perspective, it is best to keep this system of licenses as the origin, but

then improve it. Because when the licenses are dismissed, the national associations can introduce

their own systems. To me it seems very complex, because what happens when the Dutch and Italians

are transferring players? To which rules must he fulfill? Does Rob Jansen have to do, being Dutch,

business in Italy? You have one system in which you can check, this is what the issue is about, maybe

you will get hundreds of different systems. To me it seems way more complex. ProAgent of Roberto

Branco Martins is from great importance, because it is important that the more famous agents, such

as Rob Jansen, Kees Ploegsma, name them, that they remain being seen as authority and protecting

the business. To me it seems difficult to say that we here have our own rules. To me it seems very

complex. How does Roberto Branco Martins say it has to look like then?

He says that also the agents without a license have to be punished. FIFA gives sanctions to people

who operate without a license, but these sanctions never can be executed, just for the same

reason that they don’t have a license. They don’t have the power to punish them.

I am agreeing with him, that’s why I say that the license you have now must be remained, but there

must be checked way more strict. When this disappears there is no checking at all and everybody can

do what he likes. But it seems difficult for the associations to distinguish good and bad agents. They

can’t say ‘Kees Ploegsma, you’re a good player agent. Rob Jansen, you’re a bad agent.’ It is very

difficult. The problem is that the FIFA hasn’t made clear yet, what kind of system they like to create.

All kind of drafts appeared, but this stated that it was not possible anymore to check.

We also talked about the exams with Roberto Branco Martins. These are checked by the national

football associations. Do you think this is fair? The graduation rates are vary enormously.

Yes, it is generally known that Russia or a banana republic somewhere else in the world, that there

exams are just bought. There are countries where you can 500 Euros for such a paper. The German

paper Kicker, the kind of VI in Germany, have send someone around two years ago to participate in

such an exam and via the illegal circuit he succeeded to graduate for this exam, by receiving the

answers to the multiple choice questions via SMS, while doing the test. He had to pay hundreds of

Euros for this. This happens indeed. We think that in the Netherlands it is much more fair and that’s

why our graduation rates are somewhat lower than the African rates.


Roberto Branco Martins likes to create an independent international institute to check these

exams. What is your perspective towards this?

The exams are very cheap and the FIFA doesn’t have to safeguard themselves for this, when someone

receives all the answers for an exam. Then there is clearly someone of FIFA who sends these answers.

So this institute doesn’t make any sense anymore. But to create a whole institute for this… to me it

seems somewhat exaggerated. You can just let it be checked by FIFA, when the answers are right and

let the candidates send an email.

Do you think that FIFA can succeed to get the market of sports agents peaceful again, mainly with

restrictions?

Look how it is now. With licenses it doesn’t work, but when dismissing it only becomes wilder. Look,

the agents now exist for a year of 25. In the middle of the 90’s, they discovered that a lot of money

could be earned in this market and this is why they introduced the license on a certain moment. 15

years later and we don’t have any grip on the market anymore. So to me it seems that it is not

realistic that they will get grip on the situation. I think that the contrary is true, I have very little trust

in it. I speak out of experience and the examples I come across.

Do you notice so little difference in the way in which agents operate then, in those more or less 20

year?

Well, I work at VI for 10 years now and when I started you hear also some crazy stories one in a while,

but the last years you hear so many stories of agents doing business with children and you also see a

lot of trials or agents who stand before clubs and who claim absurdly high sums of money, that it

even becomes worse, which is logical, because there are a lot more agents with the same amount of

players in the world. When you say that you have the same amount of 300 to 400 players in the

Netherlands and ten years ago there were 20 agents and nowadays there are 120 agents. It is logical

that the bigger competition brings a lot more wrongs and abuses with them.

It is likely that you already know about what happened with the transfer of Palermo, the transfer

from Javier Pastore to Paris Saint Germaine. The president of Palermo wanted to drag his agent to

court, but don’t you think that Palermo is also wrong, while they have paid the agent 20 million

Euros, if it is true?

I think you have a good point. Clubs often complaint about agents, but the problem is that those clubs

give the agents the powers themselves. Well, the clubs pay the agents those absurd amounts, even

crazier, they complaint, but they approach the agent themselves, when they like to buy a player. First,

those clubs make, 1,2,3 deals with an agent and afterwards they complaint in the media about them.

To come back to your first question, are those agents not to negative in the news, well, this is also

caused by the clubs, who pay those absurd amounts, giving the agents the power and keep them on

their feet. It are basically crocodile tears that are cried by Palermo. If someone had the power to

break the agents, then it are the clubs. But the clubs don’t know how to organize and make

arrangements about this. If Groningen wants a player and they have to outdo Heereveen, then they

are willing to pay the agent 50000 Euros more. If the clubs would cooperate, but this they won’t and

from this the agents will profit.


We already told you that we mainly focus on the subject Management & Organization, this is a

financial subject, that’s why we also like to ask questions about the financial side. Can you please

tell us more about the financial side and how the financial side works?

An agent basically makes its revenue from the commissions from the loans of a player. The minimum

has been selected by the FIFA, a percentage of 3%. You probably know that, when you have an

interesting player who can move to several clubs, then you can negotiate about a more attracting

percentage with the club, between the 7% and 12%, which he receives over the annual lone of a

player. So you’ve got a player who earns 1 million Euros and a commission has been agreed upon

10%, then you will receive a ton per year. When a player signs for 4 years, you will get 4 tons. When

you have interesting players, you often will get a commission. This is the most interesting part for

agents. This is a sort of bonus of the club that they receive, for bringing the player to the club. This is

actually one of the major problems of FIFA and the European Commission, because it is often unclear

if the agent works for the player or the club. If I have a player for both Ajax and PSV and Ajax pays

half a million commission more, then this means that I will try to push this player to Ajax. But in fact

these are the two most important sources of income for the agents. The costs that he makes are

composed of mainly telephone costs, travelling costs, because he obviously has to fly and book hotels

a lot. Larger agencies obviously have more employees. I can understand that at an agency of Sport

promotion, where Rob Jansen works, that they have annual reports. Maybe you can find this at the

Chamber of Commerce. These are broadly said where it comes to. You can see, that when you make a

transfer, you will have around 20000 Euros for costs, that there will be a lot left.

Do you notice that the income of agents fluctuates? Or do you see that the agents have quite a

stable income over a year? Or does he earn a lot more in the transfer windows?

It does fluctuate, because you have only two periods for transfers. Well, with big agencies, who have

40 players, who are playing for big clubs, yes, they have very stable basis. But it is in general very

varied. With agents, who sometimes close off a deal, on one or two deals, they can live for a couple of

years. But you basically have a fixed income, when a client plays for one club over a longer period. In

addition you will have your commission, but for that I like to advise you to go to a conference of

ProAgent and look around at the car park. You can see there that most of them don’t have to worry

about if they have enough money. Because it are all spry sportive cars. When you earn a couple of

millions, then you don’t have to panic about if you will earn something in the coming transfer window

or not.

Our main question for our masterproof is ‘In what way are professional sports agents still important to professional football nowadays? What is your perspective towards this main research question? Well, what I already said, when the clubs keep these people up and also continue to pay enormously high sums of money to these agents, then they are really important, on this moment, they are the key of the whole transfermarket. They eventually will decide where their players will head to. A couple of years ago, it was unthinkable that someone like Eto’o, one of the best attackers in the world, would head to Anzhi in Russia. But fair enough, now it is. It all has to do with agents. I can still remember Robinho, who moved to Manchester City a couple of years ago, after that he held a press conference, live broadcasted, that he was very glad to be moving to Chelsea. He basically had no idea anymore for which club he was playing. His agent was clearly having business with all kinds of different clubs, which was confusing for Robinho, for which club he would play. So the agents will decide to which clubs the players will move. They are on the moment the most powerful in the world of football and


this not likely to change. The FIFA tries to break the agents and they try to do this with all kinds of licenses. But I question if this is the right way. What we notice is that you are watching quite negatively towards the role of the agent. Well, negative…. You can basically lay it down parallel to each other. They basically earn enormously much for what they are doing and they are deciding what the future of a player is. You have a lot of players of 14 or 15 years old, who are brought to England by agents. This seems to me something to worry about. This what is going on nowadays in the player agencies. We also held a survey under youngsters of our college. This actually pointed out that it is basically a boy’s dream, to become a player agent. Well, I can well imagine this. There is a lot of demand for this job in the world of football. This is why a lot of people are doing the exams. It is a way to become financially independent. I can understand this is a dream for a lot of people and this is exactly the reason why we have so many agents. Do you think this is justly? Or do you like to warn them for this world? Is there still some danger in this world? Well, if it is your dream to make fast money in the world of football, then yes, I can understand it. Who am I to say that you may not have this dream? But you have to know, if you want to survive in this world, then you must be able to be ice cold and tough, if you don’t want to work with 13 year old boys, then you are almost chanceless, because are doing this and they do give this boy a playstation, when you don’t do this… Look, if you have 17 or 18 year olds, then most of the time they already have an agent. Ethical standards must not be taken too seriously, because then you won’t make it in this world. So yo have to be coldblooded, because then you can’t be a successful agent. you have to consider this. We also talked with James Herst, he just got his license, but he also sees that it is very difficult to fight himself into this world. Do you think such a dream is very realistic? Well, a lot of people think in first instance that they are going to work by the rules, they are not approaching minors, they won’t offer them presents. A lot of agents are experiencing during the years, that they are quite chanceless, even worse, when you colleagues are rather doing this. On a certain moment, you will arrive at a point where you have to say that you are going to do this as well and be a successful agent or that you keep playing by the rules and not earning so much money. When you are not troubled by this, then you can try it, but when you have ethical problems with this, then you can better not do the exam and become an agent, because you’re basically chanceless. Do you have any examples of agents that have offered people, for instance, a playstation, or are it just rumours that spread around the world? This is certainly true, I can point someone out for you. It is often said by the head of the academies of the clubs and they obviously don’t make this up. We also dealt with Arie Treffers, who works with PSV, and when he accompanied a boy, he made his father director of his own company. Well, it there are a lot of examples. Kitches are being offered, great amounts of money are being deposited on bank accounts. I can say with a lot of certainty that these present are being offered. We are trying to find as many written sources for our research, but these are rather scarce. We like to know where you find your information and if you have some tips for us, to find as many information as we can. You can look for the research of the European Commission. There have been some arbitral cases between agents and the KNVB and between agents and clubs, you can find it on the online library of the KNVB. You also have a database on rechtzaak.nl, when you look for articles on football or agents, you will certainly find some cases. You can find some conflicts that are presently going on. You can also search on the website of FIFA. Here is can also an overview be found of all the licensed agents in


the Netherlands. The KNVB also has this. On the FIFA website you can also find some regulations that an agent has to fullfil, the regulations for agents. This is an overview which says step for step, which duties and rights the agent has. The FIFPRO is at the moment busy with a blackbook, which they like to offer to the European Commission. Here you can find all the conflicts and wrongs in the football countries in Europe. If a player reports at the union of for example Ukraine or Belgium, then the union asks him if he wants to explain himself in the blackbook of FIFPRO. A couple of players did this already and there are also some conflicts with agents in it. The FIFPRO is situated in the Netherlands, it is an international player union. They have their head office in Alphen. To come back to Roberto (Branco Martins), about the correcting of the exams, I think it is a good idea to make the system more honest and justified. I just think it won’t ever happen. This kind of initiatives come from the agents itself, these are quite good initiatives. I still have a question, I see on the site that Daan Kramp and others are members of ProAgent, while ProAgent is fighting against this kind of agents. Don’t you think this is strange? I totally agree with you. It has been founded a couple of years ago, and the idea was, at least, that’s how they made this public, to clean and fix the image of this employment group. I think this is a good initiative, I can understand that agents are quite frustrated in the Netherlands, if there are so many conflicts, they will suffer from this too. But in the further years, they don’t seem to take an opinion. This is their opportunity to distinguish between good and bad agents. But the thing that they don’t learn is, also with Daan Kramp, that they don’t undertake any action. Not even with Arie Treffers. On a certain moment Arie Treffers himself resigned. So of the cleansing of the image isn’t succeeding at all. Because they don’t dare to undertake action. Even though there is proof that a member had business with a 15 year old boy who moved to Chelsea and when even then you don’t dare to take measures, it is very difficult to clean the image of agents. We would like to thank you sincerely, we wish you a lot of luck in Russia. You are from great importance to our research, because before this interview, we could draw very different conclusions than after the interview. Which conclusion did you draw before this interview then? That the view that has been sketched, is very exaggerated. Of course there are a lot of agents that have the best intentions for their players, but on the whole image, a lot of concrete examples can be found. It is not something that the media makes up themselves. It is really happening and the agents are not successful in cleansing this image. Every month there pops up a new story, that’s why the image is bad. But I don’t say that every agent is defined as a criminal. We obviously understand this, but after this interview, we understand that the whole world works very different. For example Sigi Lens, he astonished us a bit. That’s why it is important that you have approached a journalist, look, I look at his much more independent than someone of the association or an agent. They all have own interests, mainly financial interests. They will never be entirely open. I can just say what happens and I don’t have any interest in this. It is a good choice that you have approached someone who is more at the sideline.


Before we had drawn the conclusion that an agent is very important in football, because the players can focus on football instead of financial side issues. Certainly for top players, they are really useful. Their interest are so big, that they are forced to have a manager. But the sums are not standing in relationship with what they are executing and what they do for the clubs, where are the agents are continually teaming up with the clubs. Because next to this we say that next to the fact that he withdrew money out of the football world, he also created money in the football world, because he raises players and he finds sponsor, which are necessary for the development of players. The strange thing in football is that the club pays the agent. The money that is in the football world, will be deposited to the agent. The FIFA wants the players to pay their agent, but this doesn´t happen, that´s why it disappears from the football world. The FIFA also made a law, where the bill is given to the player, only this isn´t possible, because of national law. The agent will use this always as an argument, but the Dutch agents earn their money mainly in foreign countries. The Dutch market isn´t as interesting as the Spanish, English, German or Italian. You could make laws here, but as an agent you aren´t affected by this. It is for a player much less interesting to hire an agent, when he must pay him himself. What they have done in England, is that they wrote on their loan stroke how many commission was paid to their agent. Well, I can remember how a couple of Dutch internationals were astonished by this, because they didn´t know how their own agent was filling their pockets. But in the Netherlands it is not possible to oblige players to pay for their agent. Yes, in the Netherlands we have the law WAADI, but so has the FIFA more laws that is contrary to national law. I thought this law is in every Western European countries.. Ooh, we never researched that. We think we have gained enough answers to our questions. We like to thank you sincerely.


Appendix 10 - Article in the Mirror Football An article on the website of Mirror Football, showing that the media tries to create a negative view upon football agents.

Chelsea squander £9MILLION on agent fees for two players

Published: 23.00 30/11/10 by Martin Lipton

Chelsea spent more than £9million on agents’ fees this year – but bought just two players.

Latest figures from the Premier League put the Blues top of the big spenders list, just as other clubs are cutting back on their own fees.

Spending was down on payments to agents by more than £3m in the year to September 30.

But that still meant more than £67m was splashed out, with Liverpool second. The Reds’ spending also rose, from £6.6m to over £9m, in a period when they were embroiled in takeover problems.

Chelsea had been second on the list last year but handed agents a whopping £9.3m this time.

They had signed just two players in that time – Yossi Benayoun for £5m from Liverpool and Benfica’s Brazilian Ramires for £18m.

Manchester City had been last year’s biggest spenders but managed to halve their outlay this year – from almost £13m to less than £6m.

The Eastlands outfit cut their agent-spend significantly but still managed to bring in expensive players.

They signed David Silva, Yaya Toure, Mario Balotelli, Jerome Boateng, Adam Johnson and James Milner for a total of £117m. The total amount was lowered due in small part to Premier League newcomers Blackpool (20th on the list).

Ian Holloway’s outfit spent less than many top teams’ players earn in a week – just £45,000. The Seasiders brought in 10 players for their small agent fees, including DJ Campbell of Leicester.

At £2.3m Manchester United spent almost £1m more than in 2008-09, but they were still a long way behind Bolton, Everton, Sunderland, Spurs and West Ham, all of whom spent more than £3m.

Harry Redknapp’s team were the fourth-highest spenders at £5.3m.


The latest figures show that payments to agents by clubs on behalf of players fell from over £70.7m last year to £67.1m to the year ended September 30, 2010.

There were 742 transactions during the latest period.

Club Oct 09-Sep10 Oct08-Sep09

Arsenal £3,660,199.00 £4,760,241.00

Aston Villa £2,279,536.50 £1,708,374.00

Birmingham £1,518,529.09 £974,982.00

Blackburn £1,623,232.92 £1,610,885.00

Blackpool £45,000.00 -

Bolton £3,549,316.72 £3,166,611.00

Burnley - £468,398.00

Chelsea £9,293,751.48 £9,562,223.00

Everton £3,599,040.51 £2,008,407.00

Fulham £2,087,373.55 £1,469,258.00

Hull City - £1,599,188.00

Liverpool £9,032,528.49 £6,657,305.00

Man City £5,952,261.33 £12,874,283.00

Man United £2,312,726.00 £1,517,393.00


Newcastle £2,417,776.00 -

Portsmouth - £3,184,725.00

Stoke £2,196,968.50 £716,042.00

Sunderland £4,421,990.72 £2,007,040.00

Spurs £5,361,229.87 £6,066,935.00

West Brom £614,195.73

West Ham £3,419,089.99 £5,527,548.00

Wigan £2,461,500.00 £3,576,972.00

Wolves £1,291,794.00 £1,235,703.00

Total £67,138,040.40 £70,692,513.00

Read more: http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/news/Chelsea-top-the-spending-list-for-agent-fees-as-the-Premier-

League-squanders-67m-in-2009-10-article641525.html#ixzz1abRX2gMR

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masterproof about player agents

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