FIFA want to drop their position as the world’s highest authority on cross-border transfer disputes, according to the UK’s leading agents who have revealed the new proposals to ESPN Soccernet.
ESPN Soccernet has learned of one of the most radical moves in world football which would see a major change in the way international transfer violations are dealt with.
FIFA have privately confessed that they cannot cope with the deluge of complaints and disciplinary cases and want to hand it over to the individual football associations, and they have the backing of some of the game’s most powerful agents.
Europe’s top agents are actively lobbying in favour of removing the responsibility of investigating complaints and rule breaches from FIFA and hand them back to domestic associations.
Three well-known football agents, in a position of authority and privvy to the talks, spoke to ESPN Soccernet about this revolution behind the scenes; Mel Stein, Jerome Anderson and Jon Smith.
Mel Stein, one-time agent of Paul Gascoigne, who, as a lawyer, represents First Artist Corporation and is a leading light in the Association of Agents, told me: “It seems FIFA may be dropping out of regulation and leaving it to the FAs.
“We at the AFA would be happy with that, though ideally we would like to be able to self regulate with an appeal process to the FA. I do think that the less FIFA are involved with anything to do with UK agents, an industry they have never really understood, the better.
“The UK industry is in my view the best ordered of all agents’ industries worldwide and we really don’t need external European interference.”
Jerome Anderson, who specialises in handling Arsenal players, from Thierry Henry to Ian Wright, is currently vice-chairman of the European Association of Football Agents and on the board of the domestic AFA. The London-based super agent is wholly in favour of the plans to change the landscape of transfer discipline.
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