by Tom Bower
During a trip together to Denmark in 1998, Stretford had persuaded Walter Smith, the manager of Everton, to buy Peter Degn, a midfielder from Aarhus. Michael Dunford, Everton’s chief executive, exploded in an unusual challenge: ‘Bloody hell, Walter, what a waste of space’ . . . ‘Degn’s useless.’ Four years later, after four appearances, the player was transferred back to Denmark. Michael Dunford’s opinion about the forceful-talking Stretford was explicit: ‘He wants his pound of flesh but I wouldn’t buy a second-hand car from him.’ Stretford’s rebuttal was explicit: ‘I didn’t pull one over them. I believe the person who decides to buy the player is the manager.’ To prove his credibility, Stretford sold Everton four more players after the Degn debacle.
At Sunderland, Peter Reid, the club’s abrasive manager, had also relied on Paul Stretford. Criticized by newspaper columnists in the 1980s as ‘stupid’, Reid, a combative midfielder who won thirteen England caps, had demanded too much money for himself as a player. ‘I don’t think footballers are greedy,’ he said. ‘What I’ve got to do is cash in on myself while I can.’ Labelled by a tabloid newspaper ‘Peter Greed’, he became manager of Manchester City in 1989 but was fired in August 1993 after bad results and questions from Robert Reid QC, the chairman of the Premier League’s ‘bungs inquiry’, about two transfers. In particular, Robert Reid QC could not understand the circumstances of the purchase of Kare Ingebrigtsen, an Austrian player represented by Rune Hauge, and Ingebrigtsen’s receipt of £50,000 after his transfer to Manchester City. Having interviewed Peter Reid, the Premier League’s inquiry decided that no money had passed to the manager. Despite the complete exoneration, Reid spent two years in the wilderness until he discovered his fortune. In March 1995, the mercurial browbeater was recruited as the manager of Sunderland by Bob Murray, the club’s surly owner, whose fortune had been earned manufacturing bathroom fittings. His latest choice proved to be inspired. Peter Reid, the fifth manager in four years, saved Sunderland from relegation from the First Division and masterminded their promotion in 1996 to the Premier League; and, after a second relegation, managed their return to the Premier League in 1999. To maintain the club’s position, with limited finance, Peter Reid adopted a similar strategy as Harry Redknapp, buying foreign players. Like Redknapp, the pattern and quality of his purchases through selected agents aroused controversy.
Reid bought Kim Heiselberg, a defender who returned to Denmark after hardly playing; and he bought Jan Eriksson, a defender from Sweden who played for forty-five minutes and was released. From Mechelen of Belgium, Reid bought Tom Peeters, a midfielder, who arrived and departed without one League appearance. From Argentinos Juniors, Reid bought Julio Arca and Nicolas Medina, both for £3.5 million. Reid had watched Medina play before the transfer, but after his arrival in Sunderland he declared the player to be unusable. He bought Edwin Zoetebier for £325,000 on a three year contract and six months after his arrival allowed him to leave without playing one game in the League. He bought Eric Roy from Marseilles for £200,000, whom he praised as ‘my best ever signing’. During the second season, Roy was dropped. The purchase of Stanislav Varga, a centre back from Slovan Bratislava, was particularly unusual. Varga was offered to Reid by Ludwig Kollin. ‘His contract ends in June 2000,’ said Kollin. ‘He’ll then be free.’ ‘Send him for a trial,’ replied Reid. After two days Reid was persuaded and he arranged to meet Kollin, Scott McGarvey, the player’s agent, and Roman Duben, the representative of Bratislava, in Zürich to conclude the deal. The negotiations collapsed after Sunderland refused to pay £800,000, the price stipulated by Duben before leaving Bratislava. Shortly after, Mike Morris, an agent based in Monaco, reopened negotiations on Reid’s behalf and offered £850,000. ‘I couldn’t understand what was happening,’ admitted Duben, bewildered by Sunderland reporting Varga’s transfer fee as £875,000. After a few months playing for Sunderland, Reid spoke of selling Varga for £3.5 million, but in March 2002 he went on loan to West Bromwich Albion.
Mike Morris, based in Monaco, was counted among Reid’s favourite agents. Regularly seen at Sunderland’s training ground, Morris was a broker rather than an agent caring for individual clients. Adopting the role of adviser or lawyer, he had perfected methods to cope with the FA’s and FIFA’s rules. Frequently he was summoned by club managers as a trusted expert to overcome the FIFA regulation forbidding agents to approach players under contract. In May 2001, Morris offered Lilian Laslandes, a 31-year-old striker playing for Bordeaux, to Sunderland. Reid bought the Frenchman for £3.6 million despite reports of his poor performance and his availability, the previous year, for £2 million. During the 2001–2 season, Laslandes never scored for Sunderland. To save his salary, he was loaned by Reid to Cologne. Laslandes’s purchase had followed Reid’s purchase through Morris of Lionel Perez from Bordeaux for £200,000. Perez departed on a free transfer two years later.
The losses for Sunderland were not only the purchase fees but also the wages. The accumulated losses for English football were the millions of pounds which should have trickled down through the Football League to the grass roots, to improve the national game. English football was haemorrhaging its seedcorn to enrich foreign clubs and agents but the executives of neither the FA nor the Premier League showed any resolve to protect the sport’s future.
In the absence of any official restraint, Peter Reid showed no caution about buying foreign players through other agents, including Paul Stretford. In March 1999, relying on Stretford, Reid had bought Carsten Fredgaard, a Danish forward from Lyngby, Sweden, for £1.8 million. Fredgaard played just once against Walsall and was discarded. To save his wages, the player was loaned to West Bromwich for one month, then loaned to Bolton for two months, and finally he was resold to Copenhagen for £500,000. Paul Stretford felt no embarrassment about the debacle. He explained that the player had been ‘watched by scouts for some months’ before the transfer was agreed. ‘Football is not an exact science. Some deals work and some don’t. It’s swings and roundabouts.’ The club, and not the agent, he insisted, should bear the responsibility for any bad deal. ‘My relationship with Reid is excellent,’ confirmed Stretford.
The trade in Danish players to English clubs was nevertheless curious. With a few exceptions, a succession of undistinguished Danish footballers had been transferred to England, seemingly for the benefit of the agents and not the clubs. Among the players were Jorgen Nielsen, a goalkeeper, bought by Liverpool, who never appeared; Krishie Pausen, bought by Trevor Francis for Birmingham City for £5 million, although worth, according to Scandinavian agents, at most £500,000, who only played in twelve First Division matches; and Morten Hyldgaard, a Danish goalkeeper, bought by Coventry for £200,000, who remained unused. Danish agents suggested that the attraction for their footballers was England’s low taxation. After two years’ absence, Danish citizens returning home paid 25 per cent income tax rather than the standard 65 per cent. The advantage for the English clubs was less comprehensible. There was a similar pattern of purchases from Latvia. Imants Bleidelis had been purchased from Skonto Riga by Southampton in 1999 and played once in two years. There were similar ‘mistakes’ about players from Ecuador, but Peter Reid and other managers still trusted the judgement of their favoured agents, especially Paul Stretford.
To prove his professionalism to Sunderland, Aston Villa and other Premier League clubs, Stretford boasted, ‘If the club is interested we do our due diligence and look into the background of the player. Then we find out who he belongs to and what agents are involved.’ Stretford particularly extolled his shrewd research about South American players. In March 2000, he was especially proud about Sunderland’s purchase of Milton ‘Tyson’ Nunez, a Honduran striker. ‘I saw Nunez play for Honduras in the Gold Cup,’ Stretford explained after the purchase, ‘and when Sunderland said they were keen I went into researching him.’ Nunez was described by Stretford as a former player for Nacional of Uruguay, a major team, who had been transferred to PAOK Salonika.
To establish Nunez’
s ability, Stretford had travelled with Andy King, Reid’s scout, to watch Nunez play in an international match in Honduras. They were accompanied from Miami by Pablo Betancour, Nunez’s agent. Andy King was unimpressed, not least by the chalk quarry where the match was played. ‘Truly mafia,’ he reported, ‘but Stretford was pushing. He said Villa would “dive” for Nunez if we didn’t buy.’ The two Englishmen returned to Miami with Betancour and Stretford outlined the final deal. The initial fee for Nunez would be £800,000 and would increase to £1.6 million after his arrival in Sunderland. However, the financial benefit of the transfer seemed to be tilted in favour of the agents. Stretford’s finding fee from Sunderland would be £150,000 and the two agents would share a further $1.5 million based upon Nunez’s performance. Stretford returned to England to finalize the contract. During the exchange of faxed messages, Stretford’s references to ‘Nacional’, the First Division team, were corrected by Betancour to ‘Uruguay Montevideo FC’, a Third Division team. Stretford appeared to believe that the two teams were identical and ‘Uruguay Montevideo FC’ remained in the final contract. In March 2000, on the basis of Stretford’s representations, Sunderland’s representative signed the contract and bought Nunez.
Over the following year, Nunez played just once for Sunderland, appearing as a substitute. He became the forgotten player until Reid discovered that Nunez had never played for Nacional. In self-defence, Stretford explained his belief that Nacional and Montevideo were the same club. His famed diligence was flawed. Stretford blamed Betancour for perpetrating a ‘sting’ and suggested that Andy King, the scout, was responsible for approving Nunez. Stretford explained he was a ‘victim’, who nevertheless, for taking no responsibility, expected to earn nearly $1 million from the deal. Sunderland refused to pay the second tranche of the fee. Pablo Betancour and the Uruguayan club sued for the money. In reply, Stretford accused Betancour of perpetrating a fraud. Stretford’s allegation was rejected by a judge in the English High Court. ‘Mr Stretford,’ the judge declared, ‘wasn’t directly told any lies, but gradually given the wrong impression.’ There was no evidence, emphasized the judge, that Betancour had been dishonest.
In June 2001, Nunez returned to South America on a free transfer. Bob Murray, Sunderland’s chairman, never publicly criticized Stretford or Peter Reid for the Nunez debacle, or for the succession of other inexplicable transfers of players. He tolerated a manager who detested criticism, so long as he produced success. Reid, who owned 5.5 per cent of the club’s shares, detested his critics, especially local journalists. They were banned by the club from the press box in the stadium. But one damning statistic could not be concealed: Reid had spent £67.5 million on sixty-six players and recouped only £19.5 million from sales. He had splashed out £48 million, a phenomenal amount for a club worth less than £8 million on the stock exchange.
John Gregory at Aston Villa did not enjoy similar protection, not least because he openly criticized Doug Ellis for being ‘small time’, ‘a penny pincher’ and ‘stuck in a time warp’. ‘People do consider me brash and arrogant,’ admitted Gregory, ‘but I don’t give a damn.’ Considering that Aston Villa was a publicly owned company, the manager’s behaviour confirmed football’s uniqueness. During 2001, Ellis wondered about his manager’s purchases. In four years, he had spent £71.5 million on players and recouped £46 million. He had bought Bosko Balaban, a Croatian forward, for £6 million despite an unenthusiastic report by Brian King, Villa’s scout, based upon one match in Latvia. Unusually, Balaban’s agent, as part owner, received 50 per cent of the price, but the payments to other agents became confused. Graham Smith of First Wave billed the club for £125,000 in commission, firstly as the player’s agent and then as a representative of Aston Villa. The club did not protest about the contradiction. Ellis only admitted that he was perplexed by his manager’s increasing interest in foreign players. Balaban made just eight substitute appearances.
‘You’re intelligent but selfish,’ Ellis told Gregory, suspecting that his manager, to extract money to trade players, was instigating anti-Ellis chants among the fans and inserting critical stories in the newspapers. ‘It’s easy to buy players with money you haven’t got,’ Ellis barked at Gregory in what he called ‘naval language’. Aston Villa’s financial problems reflected the plight of most clubs. Just as Manchester United’s value had fallen in less than two years from £1 billion to £340 million, Aston Villa’s value had crashed. On flotation in May 1997 for £126 million – ‘against my better judgement’, according to Ellis, who wanted more – its shares were three times oversubscribed, but the price had since fallen from £11 towards £1. The club’s pre-tax profit in 1999 of £22 million had become a loss in 2001 of £151,000, despite receiving £16 million from Sky TV. Those loyal fans who bought shares were also hit by rising entry charges. Ellis was puzzled how Leeds, worth about £35 million on the stock market, could own players which the club valued at £200 million. Football’s finances were senseless. In common with most Premier League clubs, Aston Villa could not retain any money or pay a respectable dividend from its non-existent profits. Borrowing like Peter Ridsdale to buy players in the hope of competing in Europe was, said Ellis, ‘a risk I can’t take’.
On 24 January 2002, Ellis had tired of Gregory’s public criticism, especially the accusation that the chairman lived in ‘a time warp’ for refusing to buy more players. The manager was also weary of the incessant conflict and suddenly resigned. ‘John’s resignation is sad,’ sighed Ellis. ‘It was most unexpected but has been amicable.’ Gregory himself explained how he ‘needed a break to consider his future’, but three days later he was named as the new manager for Derby County. The contract had been negotiated by Paul Stretford. Ellis was appalled; he had tolerated too many embarrassments from Gregory. Quietly, Mark Ansell, his deputy, compiled a file on his former manager. Initially, he considered retaining Kroll, the corporate investigators, to pursue Gregory but on reflection he preferred the FA to bear the cost and responsibility. On 15 April 2002, Ansell presented a dossier of evidence against Gregory to Adam Crozier in London. Also present were Nic Coward, Richard Scudamore and Dave Richards of the Premier League. The evidence against John Gregory, Ansell hoped, would be used against a man who had traduced the club’s trust. ‘We’re going to investigate this,’ Crozier promised.
Ellis was pleased by the FA’s reaction, although he would have been appalled had he known that his file would only be forwarded to Graham Bean for investigation in early December, eight months later. Ellis would be loath to admit that he lacked any hard evidence against Gregory to substantiate his suspicions. The FA was not presented with more than, at most, a hint of any wrongdoing committed by Gregory. Ellis’s two bulging files simply echoed his anger against the agents involved in three transfers – Angel, Balaban and Alpay – and Ellis’s irritation that his millions had been deposited in inaccessible, offshore accounts. To the detriment of the game, managers and agents were blighting his beloved sport. Football was apparently beyond the control of the clubs’ owners. The agents held sway.
To Jon Smith and Paul Stretford, Ellis was as much a dinosaur as Dennis Roach. Although neither agent could boast one client who had been selected for England’s World Cup squad in 2002, the future growth of their companies depended upon club chairmen and managers committed to aggressive trading of players through an intimate relationship with a particular agent. By securing attachment to a club, with access to privileged information, Smith and Stretford would be relieved of the uncertainties, especially lost income from unsuccessful transfers. A nepotistic or exclusive relationship with Premier League clubs guaranteed profits. Their exclusion from the giant deals involving Manchester United’s purchase of Juan Sebastian Veron for £28 million, Jaap Stam’s transfer from Manchester United to Lazio for £16.5 million, Ruud van Nistelrooy’s move to Manchester United for £19 million, and Rio Ferdinand’s sale to Leeds for £18 million compounded their vulnerability. Foreign agents had earned millions of pounds from those deal
s and, pertinently, a sweetheart arrangement at Manchester United involved Elite, an agency employing Jason Ferguson, the son of Sir Alex Ferguson.
In a unique manner, Sir Alex Ferguson seemed subject to helpful dispensation from the normal rules preventing conflicts of interest. In 1999, he admitted in his autobiography to have received five years earlier a brown parcel containing £40,000 in cash from Grigory Essaoulenko, the vice-president of Spartak Moscow. The parcel was handed over at the end of transfer talks about Andrei Kanchelskis. The money had been returned after remaining for one year in the club’s safe. After interviewing Ferguson, Graham Bean recommended that Manchester United be disciplined under the FA’s rule 26 for ‘improper behaviour and conduct likely to bring the game into disrepute’. His recommendation had been ignored to avoid embarrassing Maurice Watkins and other directors of England’s leading club.
Football agents recall Sir Alex’s partiality towards his twin sons, Jason and Darren. Mark McGhee, a former player for Aberdeen, had moved, with Alex Ferguson’s active encouragement, as a manager from Reading to Leicester to Wolves. McGhee’s misfortune was to drop Darren Ferguson from the Wolves team. McGhee’s relationship with Alex Ferguson ceased. Jason Ferguson, the other twin, was equally protected. Agents discovered that Sir Alex encouraged Manchester United players seeking transfers in or out of the club to abandon their established agent and engage Jason Ferguson for transfers to clubs of the manager’s choice.
Jonathan Greening, a 21-year-old forward, had wanted to transfer to West Ham, but Sir Alex opposed Greening’s choice and urged him to move to Middlesbrough. ‘He doesn’t want to move to Middlesbrough,’ Mel Stein, the player’s agent, told Ferguson. Sir Alex was irritated; he urged Greening to abandon Stein and appoint Elite as his agent. Ferguson hinted that the alternative was to ‘rot in the reserves’. Stein threatened Sir Alex with writs and eventually brokered Greening’s transfer to Middlesbrough himself. Jason Ferguson lost that business but he did broker, with the help of Mike Morris, the transfer in September 2000 of Jaap Stam from Manchester United to Lazio. Stam was unaware of the sale until the deal was completed and he had been flown in a private plane to Rome. The urgency and secrecy suggested that Sir Alex had tipped his son about his desire to sell the defender, and Jason had activated other agents. The agents’ commission was £1.4 million. Jason Ferguson was also party to the negotiations to buy Stam’s replacement, Laurent Blanc. Zealously, Jason Ferguson entrenched his special relationship with Manchester United by representing Roy Carroll in his transfer from Wigan to Manchester United in summer 2001; and in creating a unique offer of a Manchester United shirt, similar to the shirts available at the official shop for £30, for £275. The extra cost was for the signature of the chosen player, a certificate of authenticity and a frame.