The transfer window has tinted glass and you are on the outside, squinting.
You’re wary of the English Reg car but the player beside you wants nothing except to get his arse on the imagined plush leather interior. Imagined because he’s squinting too. Wherever the relationship starts, even if you end up happy, you are always the ones squinting.
On the other side of the glass, the UK clubs have an unfettered panoramic view; of you and your club, your money worries and the league as a whole; aided by agents, advisors and scouts. You’ll speak “man to man”, talk about respect, the window may even open a crack but usually that’s to blow smoke in your face or up your hole. The player’s father wants him in the car. “Why are you standing in his way?”
The UK club offer a fraction of the due training compensation. They send a former Irish International to meet the player’s family. The parents panic, “he’s going no matter what”. They can’t see the wood for the trees. Under intense pressure you agree a tiny fee. The kid travels in January but the UK club don’t register him, so you don’t get paid. The keep the kid on a glorified trial until June. They break every rule. They eventually sign him, but could easily have cut him without paying a penny. You think about a complaint, but it’s the kid who’ll suffer. The UK club don’t care. They push, they win.
You walk around the pitches at the University of Limerick watching the Kennedy Cup, watching the scouts and agents watch the players. Men watching U14 kids, calculating. You see forty scouts and agents over the week, maybe more? Most of them are Irish born and bred, a few English ex-pros living over here. Some of them played professionally, in the UK or here.
Many scouts are open, proud. They wear the UK club jacket, it impresses the kids and the parents. Of course, some have bought the jacket online.
‘Advisors’ and other scouts are quieter. They wear a different jacket. Some work in the media, with companies who supply kit or even with the FAI. They have a business card that can get them in and around your club, in and around your players. You suspect but you allow them access, it might work in your favour. On match nights they rock up, a free ticket is handed over. You watch them to see who they watch.
Agents have money to make, a living to earn. There are good agents as there are respectful clubs, but it’s a business and nice guys suffer. You know it’s daft but you feel betrayed (there’s no other word for it) by those who came from and through your own league. They know the difficulties. They exploit the difficulties.
The UK club has watched the player a couple of times and have started gathering opinion on him. An Irish agent gets wind of this and approaches the UK club, telling them he’s the players agent, he’s not. He then seeks out the player, tells him that he’s the UK club’s chief scout in Ireland, he’s not, and they only work through him, they don’t. He puts himself in the middle and tries to push the deal, hoping to get a finder’s fee from the club and a cut of the transfer. He’s never seen the player play live. it only starts to come out when the clubs start speaking, the agent is told to fuck off, he sends in an invoice anyway, cheeky bastard.
No moral high ground here though, you’re as bad. You’re at the Kennedy Cup to network, to meet those scouts and get an idea of who might fall through the UK’s cracks into your league, your club. You sit silently at meetings where clubs are open about failing to pay domestic training compensation to schoolboy clubs. Some pay, most negotiate a reduction. A kid signs his first professional contract, probably on €75 per week and you argue with his schoolboy club over compensation, offering sell-on clauses or a friendly match that you know will be your U19 side. Little wonder they’re letting the next promising kid go cross channel for 10% of what they should get rather than the 0% they’d get from you.
You like a player at another senior club? Wait until he’s out of contract and over 23, an age which means no domestic compensation is payable. The other club would do it to you in a heartbeat. You hear worse, a club cuts a deal with a UK club. The latter will fund the domestic compensation for the transfer, then buy him from the former six months on and save a six figure sum on international compensation.
The agents and UK clubs take advantage because you let them, because we’re collectively weak. You look eighteen days ahead instead of eighteen months. You can’t blame a UK club for cherry picking when you’ve allowed 95% of your players to be free agents every November. You can’t blame players who can earn five times as much, over fifty two weeks, playing at a similar level in the UK. If they impress there, like they did here, they can set themselves up for a life after football.
You’re collectively weak because you’re disjointed, mistrustful. There’s money in moving players. Everyone knows it. Agents register but advisors and scouts don’t. They’re in every room, around every club. Who can you talk to? Even the PFAI cloud the issue. Yes, they provide a service to players and you don’t mind dealing with them but their offices, at FAI HQ in Abbottstown for Christ’s sake, house a registered FIFA agent. It nags at you. It’s a regular topic of conversation among clubs.
Some days you convince yourself you win. You punch the air when the transfer fee hits the bank account. You ignore the fee they’ve paid to a non-league club for another player. You know it’s a legacy of “£30,000 for Seamus Coleman, £17,000 for Shane Long”. You wonder how you can break the cycle.
Sometimes though, you get to say no. The car leaves and the only thing in the tinted glass is the reflection of your smiling face.
No
The answer doesn’t change through their platitudes and cajoling nor through their frustration and insults. It’s summer 2011 and a well known Championship Club is on the phone looking to buy Graham Cummins from Cork City. They’ve made a ‘derisory offer’ which you’ve refused. The insults come quickly; “a nothing club in a nothing league”, “not even Blue Square standard”. The player is too important to the promotion push and right now, while the cash would be nice, you don’t need it. You tell them to fuck off.
ninetyplusfour 