Agents and Clubs close to agreement: More Transparency in Transfers. Sebastian Franssen reports.
According to Sport Bild, one of Germany’s leading weekly sport magazines, the “Deutsche Fussball Liga” (German Football League) and the Deutsche Fussballspieler-Vermittler Vereinigung (German Football Agents Association) have agreed to ensure more transparency in football transfers. In the future, football agents engaged in transfers in Germany should inform their clients, the football players, about the amount of commissions they receive from a football club for their intermediary services. Furthermore, agents should also inform the signing club if they represent a player and the coach/manager of the club.
These and further topics, such as the protection of minors, have to be confirmed and signed in a Memorandum of Understanding, these negotiations are progressed by DFL's managing director Christian Seifert according to "Sport Bild".
Despite these changes to ensure transparency, a cap on the amount of commission payments is not on the agenda. During the 2013/2014 season football agents received more than 100 million Euros from all 36 clubs playing in the 1st and 2nd Bundesliga, the first time in the league's history that agents made such a great amount; as in comparison to the 70 million they received during the 2009/10 transfer period.
This sum was made up by approximately 5 to 15 percent of players' salaries, transfer and agent fees, and according to Bild's report some agents even received bonuses for domestic and international trophies.
Furthermore FIFA’s new regulations regarding ‘working with intermediaries’ is aiming at an improved transparency of agents income derived from football transfers and representing players. FIFA's new rules push for more transparency in transfers and on players' agents, which regulation states: ‘Associations shall make publicly available at the end of March of every calendar year, for example on their official website, the names of all intermediaries they have registered as well as the single transactions in which they were involved. In addition, associations shall also publish the total amount of all remunerations or payments actually made to intermediaries by their registered players and by each of their affiliated clubs’.
Fifa argues the new system will prevent money-laundering in the game, stating that currently only 25-30% of transfers across the world are conducted by licensed agents. It hopes the guidelines will be adopted by each association, who will then enforce a full disclosure and publication of the remuneration and payments made to intermediaries.
DFL managing director Christian Seifert agrees saying, “Player agents have a right to exist in the market if they work seriously. We at the DFL are not going to act as the police and try to drain the pond, just so the clubs can fill it with water by themselves”.