May 13, 2007: the final day of the Premier League season. With seconds left in the first
half of a match between champions Manchester United and relegation
favourites West Ham, the ball loops off Wes Brown’s right boot and into
the Old Trafford sky. Carlos Tevez, in default wasp attack mode, meets it and slides the
ball between the legs of Edwin Van Der Sar and into the net to secure a 1-0
win for the Londoners. Although scored in Manchester, this goal had
its most profound impact in Sheffield. However, it was a goal with its
roots, or, perhaps tentacles, in South America, Russia and Israel, a goal so dramatic it was
the end game of a transfer seemingly masterminded by two Russian oligarchs
with direct links to Vladimir Putin. In fact, it was a transfer so murky that it
would be illegal now. Tevez and Mascherano had starred earlier that summer as
Argentina reached the quarter finals of the World Cup in Germany. On the eve of the new
season, they stood alongside West Ham manager Alan Pardew at Upton Park
clutching the famous claret and blue shirts, in an improbable turn of
events made even more bizarre by the clandestine backdrop to the
transfer. This was no re-run of Ricky Villa and Osvaldo
Ardiles joining Tottenham Hotspur in 1978, this was about football’s
ceaseless globalisation and merciless ambition to do a deal.The phrase “undisclosed fee”
has never seemed so suspicious as it did in the arrival of Tevez
and Mascherano. Tel Aviv-based super agent Pini Zahavi, who reportedly led
negotiations when Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea in 2003, was present at the unveiling
of the players. Kia Joorabchian, a young businessman raised in
Britain who had started out running car dealerships in Essex and Kent with
his Iranian father, was also there. He would prove to be the public face of arguably
the Premier League’s most controversial transfer.
In 2004, Joorabchian’s London-based Media Sports Investments (MSI) struck a 10-year
deal with Corinthians, one of Brazil’s biggest football clubs, investing
$35m for a share of the team’s profits. Exiled from Moscow, Boris Berezovsky and Arkady
Patarkatsishvili were said to be behind the secretive MSI, playing
key roles in the financial and operational objectives of the business. At Corinthians,
they took control of the transfer rights of Tevez and Mascherano, who signed
from Boca Juniors and River Plate. By the mid-2000s, third-party ownership (TPO)
had become commonplace in South America, with Joorabchian and his
associates becoming leading exponents of the practice.
“They are a way of bringing outstanding players to clubs that would not be able to
afford them ordinarily,” he told The Daily Mail. “What happens, in Brazil particularly,
is that clubs cannot afford to buy a player. So they go to a business, a
bank, a major supermarket, an individual, a person, a wealthy individual and say: ‘We
want Mr X. You put up 70, 80, 100% of the money, let him play here.’
It is a little bit like a loan deal between two clubs, except it is a loan deal between
the club and a third party.” Despite Joorabchian having previously claimed
that "Tevez will leave Corinthians if a team pays the contract's release
clause, which is between £69m and £83m", a very different agreement was struck with
West Ham. According to a New York Times report, the players signed for
nothing, on the proviso that they had absolute freedom to move clubs at a later
date. It is this part of the deal that would prove so divisive and act as the catalyst
for a global ban on TPO. “If the oligarchs had been passive investors
in the two players, West Ham would have complied with the rules, but it would become
clear that they had complete control over the next transfer of the
Argentines. According to Premier League rules, that was not allowed. Third parties could
not acquire the right to ‘influence’ the policies or performance
of teams,” explained the newspaper, in an excerpt from Football’s SecretTrade:
How The Player Transfer Market Was Infiltrated by Alex Duff and Tariq Panja.
Despite the arrival of Tevez and Mascherano, West Ham started the season in dismal form,
going nine games without a win and failing to score in seven. In November,
a consortium led by Eggert Magnusson, the president of Iceland’s
Football Association, completed an £85m takeover. Shortly after, the new board replaced Pardew
with Alan Curbishley and loaned Mascherano, who had made just five
league appearances, to Liverpool. Tevez had made his debut as a substitute on
September 10 in a 1-1 draw at home to Aston Villa, where he came on for
Marlon Harewood. “A move that has raised many eye brows...now
can he make the difference?” pondered commentator Rob Hawthorne,
somewhat understating the Hulk-like impact the Argentinian was destined to have.
Tevez, who netted his first West Ham goal in the epic 4-3 Premier League defeat to Tottenham
at Upton Park in February, scored seven in the final two months
of the season and was named Hammer of the Year.
But the closing stages of the campaign were mired in controversy for the club, who were
fined £5.5m at the end of April after being found guilty of acting improperly
over the transfers of Tevez and Mascherano. An FA Premier League (FAPL) panel concluded:
"They knew the only means they could acquire them would be by
entering into the third-party contracts. Equally they were aware the FAPL at the very least
may not – and in all probability would not – have approved of
such contracts. They determined to keep their existence from the
FAPL.” The Manchester United victory was the last
and most significant of seven wins from West Ham’s last nine games. But
the fall-out from the transfer had repercussions far beyond the league table, which saw Sheffield
United relegated to the Championship after a 2-1 defeat to Wigan.
They took legal action against West Ham and, 12 months later, an
independent FA tribunal ruled in their favour. “We have no doubt that West Ham would have
secured at least three fewer points over the 2006-07 season if Carlos
Tevez had not been playing for the club,” stated the chair, Lord Griffiths.
Consequently, West Ham reached an out-of-court settlement worth almost £20m with Sheffield
United, while Tevez moved to Manchester United.
Meanwhile, the Football Association banned TPO at the beginning of the 2008 season. A
year before, FIFA established a working group to evaluate the practice within
the game and, concluding that "TPO has harmful effects on football and
its essential values, thereby undermining the overall integrity of the game”, reached
a decision to issue a global ban in December 2014.