Premiership Bungs - The Wrong Quest

The Ranter

Huddled in a cramped press conference last week the massed ranks of the press corp could be forgiven for feeling under whelmed by Lord Stevens' interim report into corruption in the English game.

In fact, there was no report as the 'Quest' team asked for more time to look into alleged malpractice in Premiership football. But the surprise is not that the report made a non-appearance but that anybody expected any different or indeed a detailed judgment.

The Quest Inquiry has sat since January this year, charged by the FA Premier League with - in effect - clearing the English game's name under the pretence of investigation. In reality, few within the game seriously anticipate the all-encompassing inquiry that the football-watching public want.

The juxtaposition facing Quest is that the very people who employed it - the 20 Chairmen of the Premier League - are the people who provide some of the biggest roadblocks to progress.

Financial transparency has all but disappeared as overseas owners, off shore bank accounts and holding companies dominate the finances of players, agents and managers alike.

At stake though is not just the financial probity of Premier League clubs but the very soul of the game. For if fans can no longer trust their managers and chairmen to conduct transfer business in the best interests of the club then the link between supporters and their clubs will be lost forever, drowned in a sea of greed and corruption.

If the terms of Quest were hampered from the start then the challenge it faces in rooting out corruption is nigh on impossible.

Where once a 'bung' was delivered in the form of a brown paper envelope left in a secret locker - the favourite pastime of George Graham - international money systems now dictate that Quest engage the help of secretive offshore institutions. These are the very same institutions whose sale is based on their absolute secrecy.

But the anecdotal evidence is too strong to ignore. Money is undoubtedly leaving club's bank accounts and heading into players, managers and agents' hands - quite probably illegally. After all a 'bung' is simply football parlance for bribe - an illegal payment under British law.

In delivering its interim statement Quest revealed that some 39 of the 365 transfers under investigation warrant more time. These 39 involve some 8 Premiership clubs, not including the recently promoted sides but taking in last year's relegated clubs.

If that is the sum total of muck that has been raked up then it hardly represents the endemic nature of bung giving and taking that some in the game have led the public to believe. This, surely, is football closing ranks.

But what if Quest is looking in completely the wrong direction? Undoubtedly money is paid to managers - a small sum creamed off the top to ease the passage of a transfer.

Where there are large sums of money there is corruption - that much is inevitable. What if the football world is leading itself down the wrong path; that the hunt for the bung is nothing more than a red herring?

Take the example of Louis Saha's transfer to Manchester United in January 2004. Nobody is suggesting that the transfer was improper or that Sir Alex took a bung.

Here's a player who was so desperate to move from Fulham that he mooted the idea of a strike in the media should he not get his way. Despite the war-of-words between the clubs the Frenchman forced his move, joining United in a £12.6m deal on vastly increased wages.

It was always inevitable once Saha had set his heart on wearing red. Yet the agent made £750,000 out of the deal, paid in one lump sum by Manchester United. We know this because the club published in full the transaction.

Why the exorbitant fee, which represented in one transfer the lifetime earnings of an average fan? Did the agent scout and find a rare gem therefore earning the money? No. Did he broker a deal that would never have taken place without him? No. Did he actually add any value at all to the buying club? Undoubtedly, no.

What the agent did - aside from negotiating a contract on behalf of the player - is place himself between the clubs and the player. This is the modern scandal of agents, not £50k here and there in bribery.

The agent has infiltrated the national game to the point whereby they can halt a transfer unless paid vast sums of money - cash that is never returned to the game.

They do not act in the interest of the player - the PFA could do that just as well. They do not act in the interest of the clubs - all top sides have vast scouting networks, they know the players that they're buying.

In fact agents in football have become a law unto their own, acting in pure self-interest, creaming cash off the top of each and every deal.

Fans should be angry about this but they are not because very few clubs are transparent about what they do with the fans' money. The case of Saha, that of Roger Lindse - the agent who received £1.5m from United for 'negotiating' Ruud van Nistelrooy's last contract - and others have only come to light because for a very brief period of time the Manchester club were forced to be transparent by investors.

That time is long gone. Elsewhere literally millions of pounds per season is disappearing from a game that is dying at grass roots level. It's a fact so scandalous that fans should be hitting the streets in protest. They are not.

Yet when Quest finally reports and the scapegoats named, football will convince itself that the demon has been excised. It won't have been.

Ridding the game of a middle ranking agent, or two, and if we're lucky a Premiership manager, will solve nothing bar position the FA as 'tough.' Many more millions will continue to disappear through offshore accounts to agents who remain unaccountable, and largely untouchable.

Football could do something if it really wants to act with probity. But dare it?

An independent clearing house should vet all transfers and publish in full all the financial figures to do with each deal. All money should go through that clearing house and to two parties only: clubs and players. Any agents involved in a transfer should be named and licensed from the outset.

The FA should enshrine in its laws that players, not clubs, pay agents for all negotiation on their behalf - particularly in regards to contract renegotiation. All agents working in England must be registered in England and punished via the FA for any financial impropriety.

A compulsory independent financial audit each season will ensure this to be so. Agents fees should be split across the length of players contracts - disloyalty by the player means the agent doesn't get paid in full.

Most importantly a cap must be placed on agent's fees, which is a reasonable percentage of player's wages. Say 10% but only if the player himself agrees to it and pays the fees himself.

These rules would reduce the incentives for players paying agents to a great extent, thus hampering the ability of agents to continue being such an integral part of the football market.

Should a player choose to be represented by an agent then they pay them. It's that simple. Should players begin to choose to be represented by their union, a cheaper more professional body, then the agent will be cut out of football, forever, and the game will be healthier for it.

For that to happen the community must recognise the enemy before it, not be distracted entirely by the chaff liberally delivered in the media. Sadly, it would seem that we're some way off that level of insight.

The Ranter

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