Football agents are braced for losing fortunes in fees due to coronavirus

Just as clubs seek to keep their heads above water amid a parlous financial situation – with many lower down the pyramid facing a potential battle for survival if football is shut down for a long period – so many agencies are bracing themselves for losing fortunes in owed fees and a fight to maintain their own existence.

The impact is likely to be particularly felt by lower-level intermediaries who are owed money following transactions in the last two windows, while agents are entitled to be conscious of the fact that they are not recognised as football creditors and have little protection in regard to money owed by clubs.

Established agencies with a broader client-base remain in a better position, but pragmatic decisions still must be taken in order to withstand the financial maelstrom affecting football and sport.

Leeds-based agent Hayden Evans told The Yorkshire Post: “The agency world is a funny environment, really. There’s 300 or 400-odd registered agents in England and I have not got a clue what 70 per cent of them do or who they represent.

“We have been going 28 years now and I don’t come across these people.

“A lot of one-man bands work in the lower-leagues and I hear of agencies who specialise in the Conference. But I don’t know how they make the money and I fear for the Conference clubs as they just don’t have the money to operate in the same way as the Championship and above.

“There will be some sort of fall-out for the smaller agencies dealing lower down the league as I worry more for the clubs. At the end of the day, there might not be as many clubs, let alone players.

“For us, it is Andy Gray and myself and we have that continuity over 28 years. When it has been smaller clubs or young players in their first two or three contracts, very rarely do we take a fee anyway.

“That is not going to impact that much on us. Like any business, you look at your business day to day and your cash-flow is going to be affected like everyone else in the country right now.

“Fortunately, the government are bringing initiatives for the self-employed because that is what hits us as we are not entitled to 80 per cent of salary etc and the subsidies. That will have an impact on the majority of agencies.”

For those agents who are owed money in payments from clubs, taking legal action and being aggressive in their pursuit of cash can also prove a double-edged sword.

It is highly likely to provoke clubs into declaring that they will not work with certain agencies again when football emerges from its current hiatus into more straightforward times, whenever that may be.

“This is why, in the final analysis, many agencies are remaining philosophical about their situation in the short-term as they – like everyone else in the game – take a hit or two in these turbulent times.”

It will represent a burden shared in the view of Evans and many others, with staff, players, clubs and governing bodies all having to make sacrifices for the collective well-being of the game in its most challenging hour.

Evans continued: “I have said many times that we cannot force anybody to pay us.

“At the end of the day, it is the club’s decision and the people who run the clubs who decide that there is a need for agents and the clubs who write the cheques because, ultimately, the clubs want the players we represent.

“We are not taking it from the public funds or fans, although sometimes they think we might. Ultimately, the clubs decide whether they fund agents, simple as that.

“I don’t think clubs will enter into dialogue with agents. There is a European-led agency union which tends to sit and talk to the people at FIFA or UEFA.

“At national level, the last people that clubs will want to talk about or think about talking to are agents, frankly.

“I am a realist. If they (football clubs) have a list of debts on their desk at the end of this – after three, four or five months or however long it might take – at the bottom of the pile and the invoices are the agents, we have to live with that.

“We now have three or four months to batten down the hatches and you don’t know when your next income is going from until football opens again.”

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