The 20 biggest football agents, their clients and their source of income
When a transfer window looms, football agents are often thrust into the limelight – often by their design. Representing the best players in the sport, football agents have the ability to shift the tectonic plates of power between clubs.
These so-called ‘super agents’ pull the strings throughout the year to ensure their clients get a move to their favourite clubs or get a lucrative contract at their current clubs, bagging a fat paycheck for themselves in the process.
In short, they are the power-brokers in football. So much that many leading clubs make it a point to have healthy relationships with agents.
How do football agents make money?
In a nutshell, the rule of thumb as far as agents’ fees go is – “You get paid when your footballer gets paid”. The agents make money through 2 ways mainly – by brokering a transfer deal and by the representation of their clients.
While the agents get paid 10% of the total sum of a transfer deal including their player generally (the numbers may vary as per the importance of the deal for the clubs), they are also entitled to receive between 4% and 10% of their clients’ playing contract. This is excluding the endorsement deals they manage to sign for their players (of which also they receive about 4-10%).
To put it in perspective, if a player makes $4.5 million a year from his playing contract his agent stands to earn that sum in about 10 years. This is excluding commission from his endorsements and transfers. Also, this is for just one client!
Let’s now take a look at some of the biggest football agents / agencies and their clients:
#20 Thomas Brookes – IFM
The International Football Management (IFM) agency founded by Thomas Brookes is one of the key agencies in football, boasting the likes of David Silva and Santi Cazorla as their major clients. The agency received a windfall when David Silva extended his lucrative contract at Manchester City till 2019 recently.
IFM have a wide network of operations and works with players, coaches, clubs and associations throughout Europe, Australia, the Middle East, Asia and South America.
Brookes had also worked with Nicklas Bendtner in the past, when the Danish striker was looking for a move away from Arsenal.
19) Sports Entertainment Group (SEG)
Like IFM, SEG also have a wide network of operations across several countries and boast a clientele of about 300 footballers.
Some of the premier clients of SEG include Robin van Persie, Thomas Vermaelen, Kevin Strootman and Memphis Depay. In fact, SEG stood to gain substantially in the transfer of Memphis Depay to United.