In the space of twelve weeks, a hyper-ventilating global football industry exchanges billions
of pounds as a coterie of chairmen, agents, footballers and their families enter a high-stakes
poker bonanza to outwit one another and grasp their cut of the winnings.
It’s the transfer window, where money meets machismo, and for which the public have an
insatiable appetite. Over the past year, the term “Arsenal transfers” has been searched
4.4 million times on Google, “Manchester United transfers” 3.6 million times. The
interest is breathless and global. Google Trends’ popularity rankings show that the
fiercest online browsing over Premier League transfers takes place in Uganda, South Sudan
and Kenya. This is a domestic gameshow gone global and it is only getting bigger.
The glamorous image flatters the reality though and The Athletic has spoken to chairmen, executives,
sporting directors, agents and players to reveal the dark arts that take place behind
the scenes and the startlingly ordinary conversations at the industry’s heart.
In the closing days of May, the pinging and beeping of iPhones becomes relentless. With
football transfers requiring steady communication, WhatsApp provides the perfect platform, with
more than 1.5bn users and 60bn messages exchanged daily. It allows users to organise group chats
and most football clubs now have a WhatsApp “Transfer Chat” for the owner, chairman,
chief executive, head of recruitment and manager.
All group chats have several sub-chats. One Football League chairman says that: “There
are breakouts from the main chat for bitching and sniping. But the real reason we use WhatsApp
are the blue ticks. These tell you whether a message has been read and whether an agent,
a player or a club has seen our interest or our offer.”
The blue ticks work both ways, as agents bombard clubs with proposals. A sporting director
at a major English club described the experience of being spammed with generic information.
“The end of May is red hot on WhatsApp. The best ones are the copy and paste agents.
They don’t even bother typing your name in or showing why the player would suit your
team or your club. It just reads “Hi there…We have ”X“ player available.” We see through
it. They are sending the same message to every club at the same time.”
“It’s not only on WhatsApp”, continued the chairman. “I had messages from 125 agents
in three weeks last year. Every form of communication: phone calls, emails, LinkedIn. I hadn’t
heard of most of these people. Are they even real? I had five agents all claiming to represent
one French player. The other anxiety is screenshots. I was worried about being scammed if I replied
to people. Would they take a screenshot and post it onto Twitter or give it to the tabloids?
Then I would look really silly.”
One sporting director in Scandinavia believes WhatsApp screenshots are used to stage hikes
in salaries and transfer fees.
“’Bids are now made on WhatsApp between clubs” he explained. “Only the final offer,
once everything is thrashed out, will be made on paper via email. An agent will send me
a screenshot from his player to say I must have £10,000 thrown onto this as a signing
fee.’ Then it makes it look like the player is driving the negotiations, rather than the
agent. But we know it is collusion; led by the agent to get more money out of us. And
then there are the benefits they throw in…”
As television rights have grown and the game has become awash with cash, the demands of
footballers and their agents have become steadily bolder. When he moved to Tottenham from Newcastle,
Paul Gascoigne asked for a sunbed for his sister. Thirty years later, players are considerably
more brazen.
One agent tells a story of how he organised a multi-million-pound transfer for his client
to a top-six Premier League club, only for the player to pull the plug when the chairman
refused to include unlimited business class flights for his family.
Within contracts, many Premier League clubs now include a handful of flights for family,
particularly for those from South America or Africa, to ensure a player can see his
nearest and dearest. It is seen as a small-scale investment to maintain morale.
An English club chairman described how, even now, he can be surprised by the entitlement
on show:
“Players make weird demands. They do not just want flights for their families, they
want apartments or five-star hotels for them in the contracts. Or they want a job for their
wife. One player wanted us to pay the legal bill for his recent divorce. I just screamed
an expletive down the phone.”
At one Championship side the club’s policy is to provide every player with four complimentary
tickets for a game. Their sporting director told The Athletic that : “You will get family
members asking for sixteen tickets. If we said yes, it would destroy the dressing room
by treating people differently. These are requests that often come in right at the end
of the deal.”
It is not only at the highest level where the benefits roll in. Fourth-tier Exeter are
sponsored by the airline Flybe and one recent transfer
included air mile vouchers for a new signing.
On the field, clauses and requests are becoming more peculiar. Traditionally, centre forwards
would benefit from generous goal bonuses but, increasingly, players in different positions
have sensed opportunity. Clubs in the top four divisions of English football now frequently
include assist bonuses for playmakers and wingers.
“It does not stop there,” said one agent. “We got set-piece bonuses added into a contract
recently, which means the entire team get a bonus when someone scores from a corner,
because so many players are involved in making decoy runs and finding space for team-mates.
Why should only a striker get the bonus?
“There’s more” added the agent. “A lot of clubs do big early seasons bonuses.
They will triple individual bonuses for the first six weeks of the season. This will be
for winning games, scoring goals, creating goals, clean sheets, the works. Clubs know
that a fast start defines the season so it makes sense to further inspire the players.”
The agenting profession is coloured by the reputations of the notorious few, but – inevitably
– it was the source of some less than flattering anecdotes.
In the most disturbing cases, agents take players where they would not wish to go. One
chairman explained:
“Agents can dictate to players. The player can have a better salary offer from one club
but the agent chooses the club that has a higher agency fee. I heard in 2018 about a
player who was on the brink of joining Leicester but instead was told to go to a club abroad.
He didn’t enjoy it at all, found out the truth and was absolutely furious.”
“There are some good agents, some bad ones, some really horrific ones. There was one who
was an absolute nightmare, it was all about what he was getting. And he was quite clear
on the phone – if you don’t pay me a £100k then the player won’t come to you. Years
later, I was speaking to the player at the EFL Awards and he never knew we were in for
him. The agent hadn’t told him and he said if he had known, he would have moved heaven
and earth to come.”
It characterises the subversion and self-interest within the transfer market’s ecosystem,
the dirty truth about the emblem of modern football’s opulence.