Much was made last week of the disclosure that the Treasury had spent £107 million of public money on advice from City lawyers and accountants on how to deal with the financial crisis over the past two years. And rightly so; there were questions to be addressed.
One concerned the amount: even if we allow an average rate of £1,000 an hour, it means that we were paying, say, 100 supposed experts to devote 1,000 hours each, or more than half every working week, to a problem that was always going to land in the politicians’ laps anyway.
Another asked what was the point of having a Treasury if it could not get together with its counterparts in other countries and work out what to do at a time of financial crisis, just as the Armed Forces are expected to deal, in conjunction with allies, with the military crises that cause us just as much consternation, if not more.
Meanwhile hardly an eyelid was batted at the disclosure that an even greater sum — £71 million in just one year — had left the football industry in grotesquely inflated fees to agents for services that, whatever the stakeholders in this spurious trade might tell you, are simply not required.
Not for the first time, the contrast between the standards expected of the custodians of public and private money was stark.
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Yet what is happening in football is a very public scandal. The Premier League’s calculation that £71 million went to intermediaries tallies with one I made a year ago but is probably an underestimate because one club, Hull City, suggest that the sum set against their name is only about half the true figure.
This is the first time the Premier League has published club totals. The Football League has been doing so for several years, and reporting sharp reductions in money wasted, but, while Premier League officials are sincere in hoping that their clubs will follow suit, the publication should be seen in the grim context of a bad situation getting worse.
It is a consequence of a deal cut with the agents’ association last summer in which the shoddy practice of “dual representation” — in which an agent is allowed to act for both club and player in a transfer deal or contract renegotiation — was called back from the seat in death row it so richly deserved. Dual representation is, of course, anti-competitive, but thus far no busybody has taken an interest; when you need one, they are never around.
No club should ever need an agent. If Manchester City, with their wealth of inexperience, require advice on which players to sign, they should ask their manager and, if he doesn’t know, find one who does, or can operate with a knowledgeable director of football. It is more complicated and expensive — City’s outlay on agents over the year was £13 million — only because clubs make it so.
Agents need not be confined to a single club and this helps to drive up their price. Yet transfers should all be done in-house. Most Premier League clubs have chief executives on £500,000 to £1 million a year. For that sort of money, they should be able to arrange a few transfers a year, if necessary hiring lawyers and other specialists on a bespoke basis.
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A particularly complicated deal involving image rights and so on might take 200 hours at £1,000 an hour — several times cheaper than many deals done over the past few years.
So why, if agents are inimical to good business, do clubs use them? Because they have become lazy. Rather than scout out talent, they wait for agents to bring it, promising to ward off competition in exchange for a fat fee. That is why agents love naively ambitious clubs. As soon as one is relegated and skint, they move on to the next mug.
The FA, meanwhile, remains so supine in the face of this constant erosion of the game’s finances — I need hardly remind you that £71 million would enable the National Football Centre to be built in a year — as to suggest that all hope of decent governance has disappeared into the bureaucracy.
So shamelessly cock-a-hoop have the agents’ association become that their chairman, Mel Stein (star client: Paul Gascoigne) responded to last week’s report by calling for his group to be incorporated on the FA Council. Where, no doubt, they would represent players and clubs as well as themselves.
My old friend Jon Holmes, who helped with the careers of Gary Lineker and other distinguished sportsmen, is a leading voice against what so much of his profession has become, insisting that agents should work for their individual clients alone.
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They could be well enough paid for it, too, while avoiding any conflict of interest. Clubs would make better decisions. There would be fewer deals that leave supporters scratching their heads.
As it is, even no-brainers such as Emmanuel Adebayor’s transfer from Arsenal to City involve the kind of commissions paid to Treasury advisers on something a good deal more important than the movement of a footballer.
And yet the agent (another established figure, Jon Smith) tells us of Adebayor: “It was not an easy deal as there were many people on the outside trying to become involved, saying they could move him into this club or that club.”
This is the mess into which football has been allowed to sink, and supporters, like taxpayers in the wider world, are paying for it.
Let the FA do its duty and banish agents from clubs. Then we shall all get better value for money.
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Debate: Do agents perform a useful function or should they be eradicated from the sport?
Time for Champions League tears to dry on road to South Africa
It has taken a while, but Fabio Capello seems to have learnt that, when the English press prepare a gobbet of defeatism, fix it to a hook and dangle it above you, there is really not much alternative but to rise to the bait.
Hence Capello’s sigh when confronted in Cape Town with the thought that two English clubs might reach the Champions League final in Madrid on May 21, “only” (to quote most reports of his supposed consternation) three weeks before England play their first World Cup match against the United States in South Africa.
He said that, of course, he hoped English teams reached the final. But he was concerned about the losers. “It is a worry,” he said. “I hope they will not be too sorry because the World Cup is a little bit too close and there is not much time to recover physically and mentally.”
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Twenty-one days! I could not help but reflect that this was exactly the time Liverpool had between Hillsborough and victory in their postponed FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest. But let’s take a less painful example.
In 2002, the Champions League final was between Real Madrid and Bayer Leverkusen in Glasgow. Leverkusen, who lost 2-1, featured Michael Ballack, Bernd Schneider, Carsten Ramelow and Oliver Neuville, all of whom appeared (Neuville as a substitute) in Germany’s opening World Cup match in Japan only 16 days later. It was against Saudi Arabia. They won 8-0.
Meanwhile, Lúcio, their clubmate, cheerfully kicked off with Brazil, as did Roberto Carlos, of Real, who continued to run around like a puppy until the World Cup had been won. The gallant finalists were Germany, for whom Schneider and Ballack had fine tournaments. Leverkusen players scored winning goals in every knockout round except the final, which Ballack missed only through suspension.
Let’s hope Capello is not really worried. The worst that can happen is that Chelsea and Manchester United go to Madrid and Chelsea, who have more key England players, lose as heart-rendingly as in Moscow. Then, should John Terry, Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole still be sobbing uncontrollably when Capello holds his final team meeting in Rustenburg, he has my full permission to join in.