Football agents are often talked about with so much hatred that you’d think they caused the plague. They do plague social media, with endless photos of them and their players on yachts, private jets, and many other unnecessarily luxurious modes of transport you can think of. Yes, their riches often come as a result of their clients’ success, but do they deserve the hostility?
Perhaps the most famous, or infamous, football agent, was Mino Raiola, once described as a ‘shitbag’ by Sir Alex Ferguson. Raiola secured world-record fees for world-class players, pocketing millions in the process. Managing the likes of Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Paul Pogba, some even thought Raiola pushed his clients to move clubs frequently for the lucrative agent fees he’d secure.
In the 2021-22 season, over £272.6 million was paid by Premier League sides to agents. Manchester City paid the highest of the clubs, spending £35 million of the total fee. Even the Championship had enormous figures, collectively paying out £44.4 million over the course of the season.
Mino Raiola’s brash reputation undoubtedly tarred other agents with the same brush. But fellow super-agent, Dr Erkut Sogut, thinks it’s undeserved.
Dr Erkut Sogut, Photo by Gualter Fatia/Getty Images
Dr Sogut, born in Hanover to Turkish migrant parents, is the agent of Mesut Ozil. In 2013, Sogut negotiated Ozil’s transfer from Real Madrid to Arsenal for £42.5million, making him the third most expensive signing in British football history at the time. Though he understands the reputation agents can have, Sogut claims this
isn’t what it’s really like, saying, “There is a lot of stigma, but the reality is that that is such a small proportion of agents.”
Riad Djellab, agent and co-owner of North South Sports Management, agrees, putting himself in the category of agents who go about their job in the right way. “Yeah, of course that stigma is here. But in terms of myself, we treat our players as our family … we treat them like one of our own.”
Not only does this stigma make it difficult to communicate with players, but clubs too. On one occasion, an unnamed club refused to sign one of Djellab’s players simply because he was the agent.
As an Algerian himself, Djellab’s company targets North African players, a demographic he feels he specialises in. “We can represent them better than anyone else. Why? Because we are one of them. I used to play football myself, so I know how it is.”
Djellab used to play for Crawley Town, until a knee injury forced him to set his sights on a different avenue. Luckily, he was able to spend a week working with his agent, experiencing a different side of the game, saying, “I started from the bottom and then slowly worked myself up.”
With many North African players as his clients, the personal link to his players is not only important to his agency, but benefits the players too. An example of this benefit is during the month of Ramadan, a period of prayer and reflection among Muslims.
This month includes fasting, in which neither food nor water can be consumed between dawn and dusk, with fasts lasting between 10 and 16 hours depending on location and when the sun sets. Fasting can impact Muslim footballers heavily, with the players often training and playing games before breaking fast. Though the Premier League has encouraged referees to allow breaks in play for the Muslim players, Djellab also has clients in France, who do not allow this break.
Recently, Nantes defender Jaouen Hadjam was dropped from the squad for refusing to break his fast. Despite not being able to change the league’s rules, Djellab believes he helps his players in this sense.
“We're in Ramadan now, you know we're the agents, we're doing Ramadan as well, so we can speak to the clubs [about] how it affects the players”.
Because of how agents are perceived, it can take time for Djellab as well as other agents to convince potential clients of their intentions. This is especially true with younger players and their families, who have little to no experience in the world of professional football. Developing this trust benefits Riad too.
“For us, because I've dealt with my players very well, it's just an effect where other players hear ‘Riad is a top agent because of the way he looks after players’, and then it's easier to sign because my actions show what we do.”
For the players that he ends up signing, Djellab makes sure he does all he can for them and their career. In the January transfer window, one of Djellab’s clients, English-Moroccan talent Ayoub Assal, was sold to Al-Wakrah from AFC Wimbledon. This made him the second-highest most expensive player in League Two history.
Photo by Clive Rose/Getty Images
Assal had previously become only the second player to win EFL Young Player of the Month twice, the first being Djed Spence, but it hadn’t always been plain sailing for the 21-year-old. “Two years ago, every manager told me [Djellab] he would never be able to play for them. That he's not good enough, that he's too small, that he's too weak.
“For us as agents back then, he was a small player for us- we could have just left him. We heard stuff like ‘he wasn't going to make it’, so we could’ve left him. But we didn't.”
Djellab takes great pride in his company and how they care for players, adding, “That's where we showed him what agents we are, why we're good: because we were there for him. We helped him progress. We took him to the gym sessions, we invested in him, and there he was, one of the most wanted players in the Championship in the summer and in January.
“My business partner now is staying with him to make sure he settles in properly. We're not just going to do a deal and leave him there. It’s back to the family thing, we look after him properly.”
Assal is one of the success stories that Djellab will keep working with, and hope to replicate in the future, and with his ever-increasing network of clients, he will have even more of a chance to do so.
Has Djellab changed the perception of agents around the world? Of course not. But that isn’t his job. Instead, he wants to continue supporting his players, who he sees as more than clients, and maybe this way, football fans can see what it’s really like to be a football agent.
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