The Scourge of Football?

By: Tony Hamilton
Date: 04/06/2005

IN the last few years' football agents have become more and more involved in the way football is run and perceived. Most weeks we pick up a national paper and see an agent is accused of doing something underhand by the club he's doing business with.

In the last year or so I've had contact with an agent who told me things that got me thinking on how agents do business and how they conduct themselves and whether they have the best interests of the player at heart.

Since the BBC investigation about Alex Ferguson and his son Jason last year and how all the transfers of players to and from Manchester United were done, I mentioned this to my source and he told me he could name 4 top flight managers who's sons do the ins and outs of their fathers clubs just like Jason did for Sir Alex but I can't name them by agreement with my source.

He also told me that the agent's job is hard unless you had a famous name because otherwise it's a closed shop, as some footballers wouldn't be prepared to have you represent them if you haven't a big name amongst the agents' clients.

With the Ashley Cole saga being in the public eye, agents will now have to take more flak as when all the information from the national newspapers papers comes out, it will start a public outcry.

No matter whether you're Chelsea or Grimsby Town, agents become pivotal in how your squad forms before the start of any season and if football adjust itself in the future we will have to wait and see.!!

If we look nearer home at our own club, we can see just how agents have a play in what the squad will be in the coming season. Can anyone believe that other clubs are flocking to sign either Williams or Stacy?

Of course not. What happens in cases like these is that the agent tells them to hang on signing until he explores other avenues. There may be nothing wrong with that. Players have a fairly short working life in their profession and need to make the most money they can before they have to give up.

But it does show where the so-called loyalty lies. Not with a club they may have been with for some time, but with the club that pays the most money. That is the nature of football today and you can be assured that agents have played a significant part in changing that.

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