After his difficult start to life in charge of Manchester United, Louis Van Gaal will be buoyed by this weekend’s availability of a host of new signings for the visit of Queens Park Rangers. Radamel Falcao, Angel Di Maria and Daley Blind will all be in line to make their first starts for the club, as will Marcos Rojo, the Argentine defender who is now eligible for selection after receiving a work permit.
Rojo is now free to focus on his new club but his £16 million move from Sporting Lisbon has started a battle that could alter football’s landscape, if Sporting’s club president gets his way. At a Soccerex conference in Manchester, Bruno de Carvalho called on FIFA and UEFA to monitor more stringently the practice of third party ownership, what he refers to as a “menace” and a “monster”.
The use of investor funds to buy economic rights of players has become pervasive within the sport across the last decade, with the model becoming rife in South America, as well as in Europe in countries like Spain and Portugal. Third party funds are used to secure the economic rights of a promising player, usually hailing from a poorer background, and once he attracts the interest of a bigger club, the company will orchestrate a big money move and receive a huge payday in return.
In Rojo’s case the investment company were Doyen Sports who owned a 75% stake in the 24 year old. Sporting had accused the management company of pushing through a move to United without the agreement of the Portuguese club and now they are refusing to pay Doyen the €11 million that would make up the 75% of the £16 million fee. The investment company are now expected to sue Sporting for that €11 million.
De Carvalho, who took control of the club from Godinho Lopes in 2013, believes the contract the previous management signed with Doyen were in breach of FIFA regulations forbidding the third party influence of transfers.
World football’s governing body are currently looking into the practice with a report expected at the end of September, but one is not holding breath in anticipation of a solution to a problem that is becoming increasingly prevalent. It comes after a summer transfer window that seems to have been directed by the hand of Jorge Mendes, the “super-agent” who was involved in moves that totalled in excess of €250 million. With his clients worth a market valuation in excess of €500 million, he is of course the founder of Doyen Sports Investments.
Dealing with Mendes is something Manchester United are far from alien to. It was Mendes who engineered Cristiano Ronaldo’s move to Old Trafford from Lisbon in 2003, as well as more recently the loan move of Radamel Falcao from AS Monaco and the £59 million deal that took Angel Di Maria from Real Madrid. The bizarre £7.2 million move for Bebe, for which Mendes was paid £2.89 million (40%), became subject of investigation by the Portuguese police.
Deals have also been done with football’s other “super-agent”, Kia Joorabchian, whose Media Sports Investments took Carlos Tevez to West Ham in 2006 and subsequently to Manchester the following year. West Ham were heavily fined for their involvement with Tevez and the Premier League banned any involvement from third parties in the ownership of players from the start of the 2008/09 season.
Despite the Premier League’s hard stance, third parties are still making vast profits from the world’s richest league. Eliaquim Mangala’s £42.9 million move from Porto to Manchester City last month saw him become the league’s most expensive defender. Or at least it should have done, but only £24.4 million went to Porto for just 56.7% of the player, with Mendes scooping £14.2 million of the remaining fee.
Portugal’s allowance of third party ownership have all enabled both Benfica and Porto to make vast profits in an impoverished country which plays host to a relatively small league, with James Rodriguez, Anderson, Ramires, Falcao, Ricardo Carvalho, Deco, David Luiz, Hulk, Nemanja Matic, Benny McCarthy Fredy Guarin and many others passing through the capital with a third party dictating their next destination. Liverpool’s £20 million deal to sign Lazar Markovic from Benfica saw 50% go to the club while the other half went to an investment group linked to Pini Zahavi, another omnipresent “super-agent”, and that man again, Jorge Mendes.
Atletico Madrid are another club involved in the third party model, with moves taking Diego Costa and Fllipe Luis to Chelsea this summer, totalling around £45 million, both subject to part ownership. With the former, Atletico received only around half of the £32 million fee that was billed as the release clause for their top scorer, the majority of the other half going to investment groups and agents.
It was Doyen Sports who aided Falcao’s move from Porto to the Calderon, chipping in to buy 55% of the Colombian’s economic rights, leaving Atletico to pay the remaining 45% of Porto’s £32 million asking price. Two seasons later, in which Falcao had hit 52 goals, the striker was off to the tax haven of Monaco with Doyen pocketing a £12 million profit. Atletico only receiving their 45% return on the £51 million fee Monaco forked out for the player.
It has all led for calls for greater clarity over where the money is going, with Barcelona facing wide criticism for the confusion over the finances involved in their move for Neymar, which has seen the Spanish club accused of tax evasion. The purchase of Luis Suarez from Liverpool has also seen contrasting information emerge regarding the total fee involved, with Barcelona claiming the Uruguayan striker cost just £65 million while Anfield officials have the sum nearer the £75 million mark.
With so many people seemingly involved in investment companies stemming from the Cayman or the British Virgin Islands, as well as in Malta like so many of Doyen’s backers, it is impossible for the authorities to keep track over who is pocketing money at the other end of the paper trail. Lists of agent fees are willingly being published by Premier League clubs, but stop far short of identifying who the agents are. With the record being broken last year at a £96 million, a figure expected to be surpassed this year as Premier League summer spending smashed £800 million, it is difficult to estimate just how many people have their fingers in the pie.
Back to Sporting Lisbon and De Carvalho who, in the year he’s been at the club, has worked on clearing the club’s finances. After Rojo’s departure, the president now refuses to deal with investment funds. “We are in the same line as Uefa and Fifa [regarding third-party ownership]”, he said. “But what I want is for them not only to say but to do something, say we are going to put rules that makes everything fair because nowadays football is not fair.”
In a modern game that is increasingly at the mercy of corporations and global markets, the stance of De Carvalho and Sporting is a refreshing one. Michel Platini, in his role of president of UEFA, pledged back in March to outlaw third party ownership but has since fell silent on the issue. The words of De Carvalho, who spoke of his astonishment in finding up to 90% of players were owned by third parties when he took over Sporting, may jolt him to put it back on the agenda in the fight to dredge the murky waters of football’s finances.
