Mino effing Raiola!
A name Manchester United fans despise, has become a rather extremely controversial figure in the world of football. At the World Football Summit held between the 23rd and 27th of November, 2020, Raiola, ranted on about the commission cap to be inflicted on football agents by FIFA.
His response to the governing body?
“FIFA will not exist in 10 years’ time.”
Mino Raiola is the President of The Football Forum. Established in 2019, they describe themselves as an international movement of football agents and players.
Their website description makes them sound like The Avengers.
They say it is meant to be a forum where all participants may contribute to identify, implement and develop the best professional practice of football agency and the best employment-related standards for football players, to the benefit of its members and of the whole football family.
The Football Forum is a group of “super agents” consisting of Raiola, Jorge Mendes and Jonathan Barnett. They are representatives of some of the biggest names in football. Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale.
Raiola is adamant. He is convinced that the “Football Forum will be taking the fight to FIFA next year as well as standing up for players’ rights and ensuring that these shocking salary caps are dropped as a matter of urgency; 2021 will be a big year for us.”
There are two sides to every story and FIFA’s is that it made a huge mistake deregulating agent commission back in 2015. Reports from FIFA have revealed that agents earned a mind-blowing £476 million from player sales alone in 2019, a 19.3% increase from 2018. These figures are just the tip of the iceberg. Raiola, who also represents French and Manchester United midfielder, Paul Pogba, earned £41.3 million from Pogba’s £89 million transfer from Italian giants, Juventus to Manchester United. He was a representative for three parties during the transfer.
FIFA criticised the transaction because it was a prominent example of agents taking control of the deal according to the issue of ‘multiple representation’. The proposed regulations by FIFA will deem ‘multiple representation’ as null and void. FIFA explains that the reasoning behind this is to regulate the transfer scenario when a player moves from one club to another. The ‘multiple representation’ method which consists of an agent representing the player, the buyer and the seller will be banned and dual representation will be authorized only if the agent is representing the player and the buying club. The proposed rules would also prevent any family member to act on the player’s behalf and negotiate deals unless he/she is a licensed agent.
The reform that would hurt the agents’ earnings the most is the commission cap on their deals. FIFA proposed that an agent can make 3 per cent of a player’s annual salary and 10 per cent of the transfer fee. This would dramatically affect the earnings of agents and ultimately pave way for the ‘super agents’ to create an oligopoly and extinguish their competition.
James Kitching, the FIFA Director of Soccer Regulatory, defended the commission cap – “It’s a matter of perception. If I’m telling somebody, ‘I’ll take ten per cent’ somebody might think that’s a small number and that’s fine. But if it’s ten percent of £20 million, that changes the perception. We need to change the perception and the activity in the market.”
He added, “I’m not saying large numbers automatically lead to abusive practices, but an agent who acts on your behalf has a fiduciary duty to act in your best interests. Sometimes big numbers may cause an agent to not act in the best interests of the client.”
Kitching might have a case here as most clubs are bulldozed into selling some of their best players due to the influence of the agent.
The uncertainty of these reforms is that FIFA has had a troubling history of mismanagement and also, how much do we really know about the motives behind this move?
Raiola, is well aware of this. In an interview with sports radio station and global audio partner of the Premier League, talkSPORT, he discussed how he and his ‘comrades’ are being used as scapegoats to disguise FIFA’s own predicaments. He says, “I think they have to take away the attention from their own problems. Don’t forget you’re talking about an organisation that has – I think – 15 of them in jail in the US for corruption and other things. And strangely enough, if you look at the history of FIFA, of the last 20 years, it was not only one scandal. [..] So, they needed a scapegoat, they needed a black skinned sheep and we were the ones, you know? That’s okay, but we don’t want to give up without a fight.”
On one hand we have agents who have been taking advantage of the market for years, and on the other, a formerly corrupt organisation which reeks of mismanagement. Meetings were held between the governing body and agents earlier this year, and the proposal is expected to be sent off to the FIFA Council in the summer and eventually implemented in 2022.
We can only hope that the situation gets resolved amicably because the players are the ones afflicted by a prolonged dispute between the two.