World football governing body, FIFA is set to introduce new regulations to checkmate the activities of football agents, Fifa‘s director of football regulatory James Kitching announced on Thursday.
Recall that since 2015, the world football governing body has deregulated the activities of football agents which means that the agents can operate in line with the agreement they have with their clients. This includes the amount of commission they earn from the players they represent or from the clubs they do business with.
The freedom football agents enjoy has been seen as more detrimental to footballers especially in the aspect of collecting a high amount of commissions from players’ transfer fees, salaries, and bonuses. Some agents even go as far as collecting commissions from both the players and their clubs at the same time.
Hence, the proposed regulation which is expected to come to effect in mid-2021 will put a cap on the amount of commission an agent can collect from a player and a club. It will also prevent or limit ownership of a player by both agents and the country’s football associations.
Besides that, unlike in the present practice where the public only gets to know the amount clubs and players earn from a deal, the new regulation will mandate football agents to make public the amount they earn from players and clubs after a transfer deal.
More so, a football agent will not be able to deal with a professional footballer without being licensed by Fifa and without passing a character test of the football governing body. This will help to limit cases where footballers have a failed football career because they fell into the hands of a wrong football agent.
More on the regulations proposed for Football agents
Discussion on the proposed regulation is currently on the third round of deliberations and could be sealed before the end of March next year after which it will be taken to the Fifa Council for approval before the end of June.
Once the new regulation is sealed, football agents will no longer represent three parties at the same deal – the player, the buying club, and the selling club. Also, an agent will no longer be allowed to represent two parties at the same deal except he is representing the player and the selling club.
More so, it will no longer be business as usual for family and friends that wish to be the agents of their wards. They can only act as agents to their wards if they can obtain a football agent license from Fifa.
In addition to that, every agent is entitled to sign two years agency deal with a player and no other licensed agent must approach the player except the player has at least two months left on his contract with his current agent.
On payment of commissions, a football agent is only entitled to a 3% commission from his client on every transfer fee. The agent is also entitled to a 6% commission if he is representing both the player and the selling club.
