Want to get involved with the glitz and glamour of the game but don’t have the ability to be a professional footbaler? You’re probably not the only one. There are many ways to get involved with professional football – either as a coach, a scout, a physio, working within the admin or running of the club, or perhaps even as a football agent.
The role of a football agent can be quite varied at times to say the least. You’ll be in charge of the footballer’s business side of things, basically. You take on half of the footballer in a sense. Whilst he focuses on playing football, you focus on marketing the footballer, you help with contract negotiations, with marketing deals, press stories, and any kind of business issues relating to the footballer.
Take a footballer like Wayne Rooney. Perhaps he’s a bad example as a footballer to become an agent of because he’s so valuable and will probably have so much business to keep involved with. An agent of Wayne Rooney will inevitably have things to keep himself busy nearly every hour of the day! He’ll have sponsorship deals, companies trying to use him to market their products, contract negotiations, and probably all sorts more that the average football fan doesn’t even realise.
As a football agent you ultimately become a friend (or at least business associate) of the player. You need to have a good personality, someone that a footballer can get on with but at the end of the day they will need to be able to trust you. You carry out a very important job in the eyes of the professional footballer – you’re responsible for protecting their contract deals, image rights, and so on. Its likely that most footballers will have other business associates too, such as investment advisers and other general business advisers, but the role of a football agent is of utmost importance to the player.
Most football agents will see the footballer that they represent as a business property, as a piece within their own portfolio. They probably wouldn’t represent just one player, maybe unless they were dealing with a world superstar like Cristiano Ronaldo, who might insist that they’re the only player they can look after, craving their full time attention. This could be unlikely though as footballers will ultimately have shorter playing careers and agents need to spread their risk – as with any business. A business man would be discouraged from investing all their money into one investment, incase that investment failed. They would rather spread risk by investing in a few opportunities – and in a way that is how football agents operate too. They choose a portfolio of a several footballers, choosing to represent those that they feel have the ability to become top class players. At the end of the day a player with the world at his feet is going to earn a load more cash then someone with 2 left feet.
Mosts football agents will take their earnings from a percentage commission on the footballers wage. So if they manage to get a contract for their player worth £100,000 per month then they might ask for 5% of this – or £5,000 per month. Not a bad deal for the agent I’m sure you’ll agree.
You may already know all of the above, and will instead be willing me to go on to explain exactly how you can become an agent. Unfortunately it’s not so simple. You can’t just go to football agent school. There won’t be a university degree in becoming a football agent (although I’m sure if you look hard enough you’ll still be able to find something online!) Ultimately the role involves a lot of business work – negotiating for contracts, dealing with image rights, taking care of professional matters, dealing with the press, and a whole load more. For this reason the ultimate route would be to study such university degrees or courses as business studies, business management, marketing, legal courses, or to train as a solicitor/lawyer.
There isn’t a set route to become a football agent – there are actually many ways to get yourself involved, but you’ll definitely need the business background or a finance/legal degree to back you up. It will be all about getting in with the right people, as with many jobs these days, and getting your foot in the door will be your biggest hurdle. You can image that there will be a huge number of people trying to get involved with managing footballers, so it won’t be easy. If you’ve got the right motivation, and are ultimately focused and determined on the job at hand, then there should be nothing holding you back. But if you think that being a professional agent is simply about going to hang out at Luis Suarez’s house, going horse-riding with Michael Owen or going sight-seeing in London with Juan Mata then unfortunately you’re looking at the wrong profession. Ultimately if you’re simply wanting to get closer to your footballing stars or are solely looking at the financial gains then perhaps you shouldn’t be learning how to become a football agent.
