An agent not afraid to bend the rules is key
Precocious talent like that of Lille’s Eden Hazard is easy to spot. It’s easier still when sporting director Zinedine Zidane says: “I would take him to Real Madrid with my eyes closed.”
Those inside the game have been aware of the Belgian for several years and it is fair to say that since Sir Alex Ferguson watched him play at the weekend, everyone will now know his name. I was talking to an Arsenal fan last week about whom he’d love to see his team sign this summer. “Eden Hazard,” he replied. “Have you ever actually seen him play?” I asked. “No,” came the reply, “but he’s meant to be excellent.”
Yet look outside the obvious candidates for a transfer this summer and there are hundreds of other, perhaps less glamorous, deals already being worked on as agents trawl through their contacts, putting deals in place with players who had no intention of leaving to sign for a chairman who had no intention of buying, from clubs that never wanted to sell in the first place.
When I started my career I was incredibly naive as to why certain things in football happened the way they did, transfer deals being one of them. Amazingly I used to think that a player earned a move by playing well. Don’t get me wrong, many do but plenty more don’t. There is no logical reason for why some transfers happen, or at least little proof.
The reality is that there is always somebody somewhere who has an agenda for wanting to do a deal and it is more often than not motivated by money. When I was at my first club we had a young, talented striker whose prolific goalscoring at youth level brought him to the attention of all the agents and scouts affiliated with the top clubs. Because he was 17 he had yet to sign a professional contract, which made both him and the club vulnerable.
Almost every day he would come into training with yet another business card that had been pushed through the letterbox of his parents’ home. I remember one letter that he showed me from the team he supported as a kid, which read like a ransom note: “Dear Mr and Mrs ‘Smith’, we would like to talk to you about your son’s career prospects, please call the number below.”
That young player made one big mistake. He had a great career at his feet and, despite many of the senior players’ protestations, he signed a deal with the Professional Footballers’ Association to represent him. I know very few players who are represented by the PFA now, and for one very good reason: their agents have to play by the rules.
What he should have done is signed with an agent who could deal with some of the names attached to the business cards. But then again, show me a teenager who always makes the right decision and I’ll show you 30 millionaire professional footballers, on the move again this summer, who can’t tie their own boots.
Perhaps the most curious transfer in recent years was United’s capture of the Portuguese winger Bébé. It caught the eye not only because of the price tag – £7.4m – but also because of comments from Ferguson at the time. “I didn’t see any videos of him,” the United manager confessed. “You’ve got to trust your staff at times and our scout in Portugal was adamant we must do something quickly.” If I were to put into print what I thought of that deal, I’d probably find myself in front of a high court judge before you could say “lawsuit”.
That said, there are times when a scout really pulls a gem out of the bag. A very good friend of mine who has been scouting for years would often go along to matches with a view to making his mind up over a target, only to be more impressed by someone else and end up signing them instead.
A little while back I thought I was getting an unexpected move when a former manager rang me up. I got excited at the prospect of a reunion only to learn that he wanted my opinion on another player at my club and whether I thought he would be interested in leaving. It placed me in an awkward position but I did what I hoped my team-mate would have done for me if the shoe were on the other foot.
There was another occasion, a few seasons ago, when I had a call from a Premier League manager in February thanking me for choosing his club in the summer. He said that he was looking forward to working with me and urged me not to get injured in the end‑of‑season run-in. I immediately phoned my agent, who was also in the dark.
As it turned out, an agent claiming to be working for me had agreed a sale price with my parent club and even personal terms on my behalf. His next phone call was going to be to my official agent to strike a deal for a percentage of the sale price, something like a finder’s fee. In effect I had already been sold and bought before I knew a thing about it. Thankfully the buying manager let the cat out of the bag before he got any further.
But none of this means a player has to move clubs. The final say always rests with us, even when a manager would be prepared to drive you to another club just to see the back of you. Recently our physio approached our most experienced player, a man who has won almost everything worth winning in the game and who has a few quid in his pocket, to inform him that he’d had a chat with his counterpart at a Championship club and learned that Doncaster were interested. “Great,” replied our player. “What do they want me to do, buy the club?”
As a youngster i had a certain club interested in me and a deal was agreed a week before the transfer deadline shut between my current club and new club. I rang my agent and he assured me that no deal had been agreed and i was to sit tight because he was still working on getting the deal done. Obviously i believed him so I stayed quiet in the knowledge he was doing what was best for me. As the week went on I then heard from my agent that it was my current club’s chairman that was holding out for more money and that the deal could go dead because of this.
I decided to take matters into my own hands so i decided to ring the chairman up. I was ready to explode on him and when i called him i was shocked. I asked him why he was stopping me from moving. His response was what are you still doing here you are supposed to be having a medical at your new club. I apologised and wished him well. I then called my agent who told me the deal had just been done. By now it was the final day of the transfer window and i had to rush to do my medical. After all this was done i rushed to my new club’s stadium and there in front of me was a contract ready to be signed that had been negotiated behind my back. With twenty minutes left i had two choices sign the deal or go back to my club. I decided to sign.
I was young ambitious and naive and decided to sign. The best part of it was that i had joined a club far bigger than my old club but looking into the contract i realised i would have to take a pay cut. It would never happen now because i am a lot wiser. My agent had left me hanging on and on because he knew the longer he left it the more chance there was of me signing. Maybe he made a few more quid because of this… I will never know. One thing is for certain though is that he was not my agent for much longer after this stunt.