Q: Hi Ohi, do you mind telling us what you do please?
OHI: I’m a football agent so I manage players. At the moment my clientele is 11 players that I manage directly. At ARETÉ we have about 40 football clients in total. We are a small team of 4 people: 2 senior agents, my colleague called Joe and myself. I’m actually the most junior person on the team at the moment. My current clients vary between males (8 players) and females (3 players).
Q: What made you decide to become an agent?
OHI: My background is in football, I used to play for many years with the aim of making it pro. It didn’t work out unfortunately, but I still wanted to work within the industry. Luckily for me, during my time playing I’d built a lot of contacts within football so whilst choosing to be an agent wasn’t easy, but I’d say it was easier for me because I had the background and contacts within the game already. I believe it’s the next best job for me that I could be doing because, fun fact when I finished university I worked in a bank and I really hated it because football was always something that I wanted to do, so as soon as I got an opportunity to get into the football industry, I’ve been trying to make things happen ever since.
Q: What does the day-to-day life of an agent entail work wise?
OHI: I’d say it’s different for different agents. Luckily for me I work for a company that follows the ‘traditional agency model’. Simon Bayliff and Jonathan Beckett, who are the directors at ARETÉ, have been in the business for over 40 years, and have managed the likes of David Beckham, Michael Owen, Alan Shearer and David Platt. Some of our current clients include Nathan Redmond, Oliver Skipp and Marcus Edwards. There are a lot of agents newly exposed to the scene who tend to have a different approach. Simon’s approach is 9-5, so we are in the office every day, making phone calls, learning negotiation techniques and staying on top of our clients’ needs. With tons of agents in the industry, you can imagine over thousands of agents that are calling the same manager/head of recruitment/director of football to sell their players. Either your client is so good that the club want him regardless, so they are even approaching you, or you’re literally just hitting the phones calling to try and sell your player (there’s this about him, he’s done this/he’s done that).
I’d say one of the most successful agents at the moment is a Nigerian man called Emeka Obasi. He manages the likes of Joel Aribo, Alex Iwobi, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka- he has some of the best players in the world on his roster at the moment. He is what I’d classify as a new-school agent. The business has changed, there used to be an exam to become an agent, but then about 2/3 years ago those rules changed. The FA removed the exam, so you then have all sorts of different people coming into the business using different methods with handling and managing players.
Q: How important is the role of an agent to a footballer’s career/life?
OHI: Extremely important (although I tend to advise players not to leave things solely to the hand of agents). Players should be proactive, put your agent under pressure rather than just waiting on them to source a deal/opportunity for you. For example, I have 11 football clients. The client who is messaging me every day asking me “What’s going on? What’s happening? What are we doing?” is probably the client that would get the most out of me. So, your agent is very important because they are responsible for sourcing your deals, but I would also advice players to put their agents under pressure rather than laying back and leaving them to handle matters, aspire to want more for yourself and push your agent to have fight for the same goals you want to reach in your career.
Another reason why agents are so important is because players usually have quite a small circle. A lot of friendships/relationships I’ve built for myself personally have been from university, high school etc. By 16 most players stop going to school, so they don’t actually have that many people that they trust and speak to, which makes an agent even more significant to the player, because that’s supposed to be someone the player can open up to and discuss different aspects of life. Thus I’d say the role of an agent is very important within a player’s life.
Q: Would you say the current agent’s fees (5-10% of player’s wages) are fair?
OHI: At the moment there’s a general industry standard of 5-10% of the player’s overall package, which I’d say is reasonably fair. However, I hear that the FA are looking to change that rule to make it strictly 5% from next year.
There’s also this general assumption that agents make a lot of money. I would say agents can make a lot of money, but it depends on the numerous factors like the level your clients are at and who your clients are. Most people aren’t aware that agents are actually forbidden to make money off a player until they turn 18, moreover you can only sign a player for two years (maximum). So essentially an agent can sign a player from when he’s 16-18 years old when nobody knows the player. The player turns 18 and has started to get attention, bigger agents then swoop in and take a client that the agent has worked hard with for two years- making no money to add insult to injury.
I would say that the agent fees are okay, but the assumption that agents earn a lot of money is leading to the FA and FIFA starting to enforce tougher regulations on agents, which isn’t entirely fair. Obviously if you are the Emeka’s/Jorge Mende’s of this industry you will earn a lot of money regardless based on your clients. However, if you don’t fall in that bracket and are trying to make it within the game, it’s not as lucrative as people think.
Q: Modern-day high-profile footballers like Paul Pogba, Kylian Mbappe are willing to let their contracts run down with the anticipation of signing larger deals as free agents, what do you make of this approach as an agent and do you see this increasingly popular approach being here to stay?
OHI: I definitely think it’s here to stay because players are more aware now and as an agent, particularly if your client is a high- profile one, it makes sense to utilise that approach. When a player is under contract and a club is looking to sign them, the buying club has to pay a transfer fee for the player, however when a player has run down their contract and they out of contract, the buying club only has to pay a sign-on fee (and then agree to personal terms). Players and agents therefore maximise this opening by requesting for inflated personal terms and the sign-on fee because there’s no transfer fee to be paid for in the deal.
I will reiterate though this approach shouldn’t be used by all players as it would be mainly top-level players that would benefit. I’ve had a client that was excited to be a free agent, thinking it should automatically lead to a bumper pay rise, but if you’re not at that level, or you sustain a long-term injury, you could be out of work for 5-6 months, with little/no leverage when sat at the negotiation table with other clubs. Ultimately it depends on the level of the player. I believe the approach is here to stay for clients/players at the top level due to the natural demand. Additionally, one thing I know about football clubs, if they want something, they will go the extra mile to get it, so with the Mbappe case for example, PSG would have likely offered all sorts of unorthodox ‘extra’ clauses/assurances to the contract proposal to retain his services.
Q: We have seen the likes of Hakim Ziyech, Romelu Lukaku take control of their own destinies, and electing to represent themselves without agents in the picture, where do you see the status of agents in the next 5 years?
OHI: It is an interesting one to be honest, because it’s football everyone tends to think they know about football and they can do the job, but then there are a lot of technical aspects within the role of an agent that parents for example don’t know but they think they know because they watch football. My response to that is that you should jeopardise your child’s career because of a personal interest. In Ziyech’s case, I’ve heard he’s working with a lawyer so ultimately there is still someone providing an expert, advisory role. It is becoming more popular that players are looking to keep it within the family opt out of hiring an agent but they should be careful because in most cases those family members don’t know the market, they aren’t aware of what other players are earning, so they could easily make an ill-informed decision just because they want to keep it within the family and it can jeopardise the player’s career. I hear the FA agent exam are resuming from next year, so I guess we will see. If parents of clients don’t pass the exam, then they simply won’t be able to represent them.
