There was a really good Guardian story today about Jorge Mendes, the Portuguese super agent and pioneer in third party ownership.
The amount of influence Mendes has in the game is pretty ridiculous. While I can see the argument for third party ownership in the abstract, especially in South American football, the reality seems to be far murkier - massive conflicts of interest when a guy like Mendes is both agent and part owner of a player, huge amounts of transfer activity being essentially dictated behind the scenes by relatively unknown people with obscure stakes, no real clarity regarding who the investors ultimately are in some of the player investment funds run by people like Mendes, etc. That Mendes' clients also seem to only end up at certain clubs friendly to his interests is also fairly galling from an Arsenal-fan perspective. Mendes has clubs that he works with extremely closely - most notably, Chelsea, Man United, and both Madrid clubs. Others he seems to never do business with at all - he and Wenger apparently have very bad blood (stemming from the Ronaldo transfer) and I'm pretty sure a Mendes client has never gone to Barca or Bayern either. Its hard not to feel that a straight ban on third party ownership for clubs in UEFA competition wouldn't be best for the game.
Of course, none of this is really news. But I thought this article was good enough to highlight and that this would be a good thread for all TPO-related issues to be discussed. Maybe some of you guys who know Portugal much better can shed some light on Mendes and his operation there.
The amount of influence Mendes has in the game is pretty ridiculous. While I can see the argument for third party ownership in the abstract, especially in South American football, the reality seems to be far murkier - massive conflicts of interest when a guy like Mendes is both agent and part owner of a player, huge amounts of transfer activity being essentially dictated behind the scenes by relatively unknown people with obscure stakes, no real clarity regarding who the investors ultimately are in some of the player investment funds run by people like Mendes, etc. That Mendes' clients also seem to only end up at certain clubs friendly to his interests is also fairly galling from an Arsenal-fan perspective. Mendes has clubs that he works with extremely closely - most notably, Chelsea, Man United, and both Madrid clubs. Others he seems to never do business with at all - he and Wenger apparently have very bad blood (stemming from the Ronaldo transfer) and I'm pretty sure a Mendes client has never gone to Barca or Bayern either. Its hard not to feel that a straight ban on third party ownership for clubs in UEFA competition wouldn't be best for the game.
Of course, none of this is really news. But I thought this article was good enough to highlight and that this would be a good thread for all TPO-related issues to be discussed. Maybe some of you guys who know Portugal much better can shed some light on Mendes and his operation there.
