Transfers, he said, are inseparable from hidden money: either the fee includes a kickback, which is the most common case, or it comes with some proper scheme along the lines of “image rights acquisition”. By his own count, 90% of transfers were rigged.
That was the account given by former agent Patrick Mendelwitsch on France Inter, the French public radio station1, confirming what you hear just about everywhere: everyone is feasting off footballers.
And even, at times, journalists rewarded for writing a “nice” piece, according to Alain Vernon, a former sports journalist who specialises in investigating football.
Ever since football turned professional, and above all over the 30 years that money has been flowing freely, middlemen have swarmed in to feast. Until recently, most of the big agents were domiciled in tax havens, which let them skim off part of the transfer money and hand it out as they saw fit.
Especially since some of these transfers are nothing but fictitious, purely accounting operations. The most blatant case was Mbappé, loaned by Monaco to PSG for 1 year to get round financial fair play. But players are regularly bought and then loaned back to the selling club: a pure accounting operation where the player never moves house2.