Agents, clubs or parents? Who is to blame for exploiting young players

Inside the dome of the National Sports Centre in Crystal Palace, a group of 40 youngsters are put through their paces.

Aspiring players arrive at the Kinetic Foundation in their school uniform before beginning a session. Their hope here is to be guided into the professional game but most are too aware of the pitfalls that come with chasing that dream.

Despite all being above the age of 16, they have learnt that the status of “talented youngster” attracts attention. And not all of that is above board, or warranted.

One of those youngsters tells The Athletic that he receives messages regularly on social media. He was first approached by an agent at the age of 12. He is not alone.

“Most of my friends have had similar experiences,” he says. “It happens all the time.

“They don’t go through the parents because they know what the response will be. They fill the kid’s head with dreams and ideas. You’re susceptible to these things at that age.”

Football Association regulations state that intermediaries cannot contact a young player, whether directly or indirectly, before the year of their 16th birthday. They cannot represent a player under the age of 18 without parental consent. They cannot earn any fees until the player is 18.

And yet, for all those that abide by the rules, there are plenty intent on breaking them.

The Athletic has spoken to agents, coaches, scouts, players, parents and club staff and learned of a system where the rules designed to protect minors are flouted. It is an issue that transcends the football ecosystem, with clubs complicit and the system alleged by some to contribute to, if not to incentivise, bad practice.

The Athletic has heard how:

• There is an overwhelming acceptance that agents are approaching minors, including via social media, with some describing the practice as “grooming”
• Clubs will use agents and offer inducements to recruit academy players, despite regulations to the contrary
• The structure of the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) encourages clubs and agents to pursue players before scholarships are offered at 14, which is described as a “golden number”
• Parents from poorer social backgrounds are targeted — they are seen as more vulnerable to inducement
• The deregulation of agents has meant some are oblivious to the rules, with The Athletic obtaining WhatsApp messages showing an agent seeking advice on how to find an academy for a female player under the age of 13
• Some agents feel the rules should be more flexible to allow conversations with parents at an earlier stage, as they are denied access to professional advice at critical points
• Pushy parents are part of the problem

“Everyone is looking for the next Wilfried Zaha, Jadon Sancho, Emile Smith Rowe,” Matt Capon, a coach with Kinetic, tells The Athletic. “They’ll do whatever they can to get them.”

 

Capon says his under-age players are approached all of the time (Photo: Matt White, Kinetic Foundation)

Former West Ham trainee Matt Carter was 14 when he was first approached by an agent. “I signed my scholarship at that age but I didn’t know much about agents, neither did my parents,” says the 23-year-old. “I signed a preliminary contract with them and I’m pretty sure that isn’t legal. I guess they wanted me to sign it so they could have a bit of security that I’ll stay with them. I felt special because you’re seen as a top prospect.

“But looking back, you had agents approaching kids as young as 11 and 12.”

The role of an agent can be an important one and it is vital to note that many do protect the interests of their footballers, whether that be personal, professional or financial. However, one thing that was clear from conversations for this report is that some agents are breaking the rules around speaking to minors.

The FA sanctions list states that since August 2016, 65 agents or agencies have been charged with breaching FA rules relating to working with minors.

In The Athletic’s agent survey for 2021, every agent said they believed intermediaries were abusing the rules regarding minors. There is frustration among the majority of agents who do follow the rules. “It gives agents a bad name,” says one. “It is like trying to take part in a Formula One race in a Mini Metro.” 

It is often only the best youngsters that are approached early. Some believe that contacts inside clubs are able to feed information about the brightest prospects. “They tend to target weak links,” says a member of staff at a Premier League club. “Perhaps part-time staff, or people they can get tickets to a game.”

Scouts pass on knowledge of promising players. Two agents noted that it was possible to attend matches below under-16 level too, which is prohibited, by going with family or clubs turning a blind eye. It is, though, thought that some clubs are trying to separate agents and families at matches, even at under-18 and under-23 level. The pandemic, with tighter restrictions, has helped that with at least one Premier League club designating where agents can sit in an area marked out by cones.

 

Discovering the likes of Smith Rowe early is imperative for clubs but players are not allowed to have agents until they are 16 (Photo: Clive Rose/Getty Images)

Social media has changed the playing field. Online clips mean agents do not always need to attend and interaction is easier.

One 16-year-old from Kinetic says agents will trawl through specific hashtags to find players. “Some kids think getting that exposure is the way to get in, so they post to be seen,” he says. “But it turns out they are the wrong type of people to get in with.”

Or even go through players’ friends. “They’ll find a player that they know plays in the team and they’ll look at who they are friends with,” says a former assistant academy manager at a League One club.

Two platforms were singled out by multiple agents as making it easier to come across young players: Rising Ballers and The Secret Scout. The charge is that by posting clips of players under 16 on their channels, they offer agents a window. Furthermore, it has been suggested that it may be unhealthy for players to have their profiles raised at such a young age.

Rising Ballers says its platform is designed to celebrate young academy talent, focusing largely on 16-to-21-year-olds. It also says it has established a support network for young players and supports more than 100 players competing in grassroots. It insists it does not ever facilitate direct contact between agents and players.

Secret Scout says it focuses largely on under-16s to under-18s who are already represented, and tries to use its forum and podcast to offer guidance.

Young players themselves, though, are often posting clips.

“You have players as young as 11 and 12 putting up pictures of them being invited to England camps,” says one agent. “It doesn’t take a very adventurous agent to come across that. Young players are desperate to be found.”

What happens afterwards is more troubling. The 16-year-old from Kinetic says he is messaged all the time. “I post clips of myself playing football and they message me saying, ‘I liked how you played here, you were great there, I’d like to take you on’.”

Last year, The Athletic reported how fake agents were targeting young players at a grassroots level.

Different inducements are offered. One source says that an agent representing a Premier League star bought his now-client a car to secure his signature. Cars and cash are common incentives, but other things mentioned include watches, getting a player verified on Instagram, video games and securing a “boot deal” — or as one former Premier League staff member put it, “buying boots from Sports Direct and giving them to the player to make it seem like they have a deal with Nike or Adidas”.

Agents cannot enter representation contracts with those under 16, and below 18 they need parental consent. But it is part of a longer-term strategy. “They don’t have a legitimate contract but it’s a way of making everyone feel like they owe them, buying their loyalty,” says an agent.

The word grooming came up frequently.

“Grooming is the word I’d use,” says one agent. “There’s no sexual motive but there is a financial one and you’re manipulating these kids and their families. Single mums and so on will be deliberately targeted. £50,000 is a lot of money and you can’t criticise them for taking it. It’s easy to be smart when you’ve got money.”

Carter, who quit the game in 2019 and is now working in sales, experienced that world. “If you’re considered the next big thing, agents are taking you to fancy restaurants,” he says. “When I was 14 I was given Nike boots. Sometimes, I’d get boots that weren’t even out yet and my team-mates would say, ‘Fucking hell, you’ve made it’. Every time I needed a new pair of boots, he would get them.

“I can see why most parents look after their kids instead. From the age of six to 12, playing football at academy level is fun. Then from about 12 to 16, there’s just loads of politics.”

 

Carter, the former West Ham youth player, says the regulations need to change

Parents too are won over with offers of money, and other inducements. One agent says others offer to pay a parent’s mortgage to encourage a player to sign. There is a perception that those who are from poorer social backgrounds are more vulnerable. Teachers and policemen are often avoided too, which is believed by some to be why agents steered clear of Jude Bellingham, whose father Mark is a police officer.

Clubs try to win over parents too. The Athletic reported last year how Manchester City offered the father of Gabriel Almeida a fake job as a scout. City denied the allegation.

In 2017, Liverpool were banned from signing academy players from other clubs for at least a year, after being found to have offered a 12-year-old Stoke City player inducements to him and his family. These included offering to take over the boy’s school fees and arranging expenses and tickets to a first-team match. That only came to light once the parents complained.

The Athletic heard of a player, under the age of 16, who joined a Premier League club and his parents were bought a house in the process. Another agent recalled how four top clubs tried to sign one of his now-clients when he was 11. “They took the family to the region and literally offered whatever they wanted to sign,” he said. “Schooling, relocating, whatever…”

Under Premier League regulations, article 299 of the Youth Development Rules, clubs are prohibited from making inducements or attempting to induce a player or anyone connected to them. A similar rule applies in the EFL.

“Some parents see the bigger picture, they’re arguably brighter, interested in sensible long-term advice rather than a Gucci washbag and a lump of cash,” says an agent. “They will realise that if an agent offers them cash, they will try to get it back with interest. Most won’t get that. For them, it’s about the here and now to survive. If you’re offered to live in a lovely area and £35,000 per year and a job, what are you going to do?!”

The consequence is that a lot of players end up with representation at an early stage.

“When I started 20 years ago, you were looking at people who were in the second year of their scholarship,” says an agent. “Now you go to the first under-18s game of a new batch of first-years, and you can bet that the best ones will be with agents.

“People are just getting in earlier. I asked my lads about a player who used to play for a Championship club. They asked and he said he’d been with his agent since he was nine. Fuck me.”

To say this is an issue for agents would be a simplification. For some, clubs are complicit, while the system encourages bad practice while being difficult to police. Parents can be a part of the problem.

Last month, the BBC’s Panorama alleged that Fulham academy director Huw Jennings offered to pay two agents, including Aidy Ward, fees worth £120,000 to facilitate the signing of Foday Nabay, then aged 14, from Birmingham City in 2013. Fulham told the programme that the club had neither paid, nor agreed to pay, Mr Ward or the other agent in relation to the player’s registration with the club.

Many believe this would not be an isolated incident, and The Athletic is aware of an academy transfer to a Premier League club taking place within the last two years that involved the promise of paying an agent a six-figure fee.

There is a sense that no transfer under the age of 16 would happen without an agent’s involvement in some capacity. The Premier League and EFL can investigate transfers between academies, and any transfer between Category 1 academies (of which there are 28) are automatically investigated. They often involve the signing of a declaration to say no rules have been breached, and investigations can include the production of bank statements and phone records.

It is felt by some that certain clubs have preferred agents. “There is no doubt that in some clubs there are academy coaches who will point under-16s in the direction of an agency to supplement their income,” says Dan Chapman, a solicitor and FA registered intermediary. “You could also see a scenario where a club was trying to sign a first-team player represented by a certain agent. The agent has got certain options, and the club might say, ‘Help us out on this one and we’ll try to push this certain highly-rated youngster your way’.”

One agent told The Athletic that a player was dropped by another agency once he decided to leave a Premier League club to protect the agency’s relationship. Another suggested that there is a head of academy at an EFL club who pushes players to the agent who used to represent him, to the point where he joins on the Zoom call when the agent is pitching to the player.

For clubs, having a positive relationship with agents can prove fruitful particularly when trying to identify and bring in talented players from other academies.

And the system itself has been seen to encourage agents to go below 16.

The age of 14 has been described as a “golden number” due to the structure of youth development, devised under the EPPP. A club can offer a scholarship to a young player during the calendar year in which they turn 14. A scholarship, also known as an apprenticeship, is an agreement between the club and player that provides a full-time football development and education programme.

Once a player is offered a scholarship, it becomes more expensive to move the player. This is because the compensation fee is no longer fixed under EPPP, and instead may be determined under the Regulations of the Professional Football Compensation Committee. Before that, the fixed fee of the youth development phase, under-12 to under-16, stands at £40,000 for a Category 1 player, £25,000 for a Category 2 player, and £12,500 for a Category 3 player, with further fees contingent on appearances.

This offers an opportunity for agents.

“It’s a significant age as the smaller clubs can tie down players,” says a Premier League scout. “If you’re not tied down your value to the club is far less. If they avoid being committed to the club at that age then there’s far more money to be made from them.”

It is big money for the best. The £120,000 fee allegedly offered for Nabay at Birmingham, for instance, proved shocking to some agents. “A £50,000 agent fee, for example, is what you might charge a Championship or Premier League player,” says one agent. Another says: “For one of our players at a Championship club, you would need to get a five-year deal on more than he’s on for us to justify that sort of fee.”

There is, then, money to be made illicitly. “I came across it more in the Premier League where young players at 14 and their parents are getting their heads turned by agents or clubs coming in for them,” says a former Premier League head of academy.

“Agents are now asking for fees for some of the better released under-16 players that are not offered scholarships — £50,000 and £200,000 were what different agents wanted for two different under-16 players that had been released from two top clubs last season. These are essentially free players, but the better ones are almost owned by the agent. Only the top clubs can afford to pay that.

“There’s so much money involved in youth development and where there is money, people want to exploit that.”

Industry insiders told The Athletic that players do not need agents before the age of 18. There is no financial incentive — by the rule book anyway — for an agent before the age of 18, and they are limited to three per cent of their gross income thereafter. A first professional contract can only be signed at 17.

A sizeable number of others, though, disagreed, insisting that young players, or at least their parents and guardians, do need representation or someone to talk to before they enter scholarships. They add that it is the last chance they are able to move more easily and affordably to another team, whether that be by stepping up from a smaller team to a top team or stepping out of an academy that is struggling financially. A parent or young player, with limited industry knowledge, may need help.

“The boy may be getting bullied or not selected, the travel is too much,” says Chapman. “They want to leave and they don’t know how to go about it.

“The rules say you’re not allowed to get an agent until you’re 16 so what are the parents to do? They can talk to an agent illegally in seeking advice, or talk to the club. The Premier League might suggest you could always talk to the PFA but if you call them to talk about your 14-year-old son in a League Two academy, they won’t have much time for you or the resources.”

 

Chapman says parents have a lot to answer for too

There is frustration, then, that an agent cannot speak to parents or guardians before the year the player turns 16. They stress that a large number are doing things with best intentions and cite the importance of seeking professional advice and the value that would have for parents.

“There’s an advice desert for families,” adds Chapman. “And that creates a bit of an underworld scenario that allows agents to exploit the situation.”

The rules offer an advantage to those born later in the year, as they have more time to take advice and find an agent. An agent can only speak to a player or their family during the calendar year in which they turn 16. They suggest that, in line with when scholarships are offered, it makes it more likely that rules will be broken.

“If they were born in November, we could be speaking to them since January,” says an agent. “Then the club will come in September and offer a scholarship and a pro (contract). Because the player has been with the agent since January, they get an idea of their market worth and what they are thought of in the game. You can give them a good idea of what’s going on. 

“If your son’s birthday is in January, his scholarship starts in July. Clubs will have been pestering families about the scholarship since September-October. They then hunt out people to advise them what to do. Someone like myself can’t give them any advice until January.”

Some agents would prefer a window to speak to parents before scholarship, running from the July to the following June, during which a player turns 16.

All of this leaves parents in a difficult position. As described by one agent: “One of my client’s mother’s summed it up beautifully. Up until the age of 10-11, it’s just fun. From about 11 to 15, it started to get a little bit more serious because the potential was then coming through. When he got to 16, she was terrified because she was losing control of something that she had no understanding of.”

Education is seen as a critical measure to improve the situation — for parents, players, and agents.

In 2015, FIFA changed the rules on intermediaries and did away with an exam to qualify as a registered agent. Anyone, in theory, can become an agent by paying £500 to register with the FA.

“It’s been a disaster,” says a former Premier League staff member. “There need to be more barriers to entry,” says another agent.

There have been consequences. Of the 65 intermediaries and agencies to have fallen foul of the FA’s rules regarding minors in the past five years, 52 concern eligibility to work with minors, such as not having a correct DBS check, or knowing the rules.

The Athletic has seen evidence of the latter. In a WhatsApp correspondence between agents, one asks for advice on helping a girl under the age of 13 join a women’s football academy. They were oblivious to the fact that they could not engage in intermediary work with someone at that age. Another agent described this as “shocking”.

There are resources available to guide parents on what to look out for in academy football. And there is a sense too that parents also need to enter the industry with eyes wide open. “Nobody sticks a gun to a parent’s head,” says one agent. “You’ve got to be aware of what you’re going into, which is a brutally competitive environment where most of these boys will not make it.”

“When they make it, they very rarely moan about agents,” says another. “When they succeed, they’re happy. When they don’t, it’s everyone else’s fault.”

Resources highlight what the rules permit when it comes to intermediaries. Some, it is suggested, choose not to follow them. Concerningly, though, many more feel a majority of parents and guardians do not understand them.

“Sometimes we meet with families of young players and ask them what they think an agent should do,” says an agent. “They say, ‘We’re not sure’. That shouldn’t be the answer.”

Speaking to staff at clubs in the Premier League and EFL, all suggest that they try to help parents with what to expect. One Premier League head of academy highlighted that they do parent education sessions, with the PFA, to speak and advise on agents.

But parents are a part of the problem.

“It’s very easy to club-, FA- or agent-bash but parents are often a significant part of the problem,” says Chapman. “I had an email last week from a dad who says he’s got a 10-year-old boy at a Premier League academy and they’d like an agent to represent him. That’s an unsolicited email; he’s found my address and reached out. I’ve had hundreds so I can only imagine a big agency would be inundated with approaches.”

“We have to educate parents now because it’s getting out of hand,” says one member of Premier League staff. Another head of academy adds: “Somebody, somewhere, needs to give clear, transparent guidance regularly about the pitfalls of choosing an agency, dealing with clubs and making your scholarship decision. Some clubs do, but it should be standard and clearly, it needs to go in at a younger age than scholarship level because agents are getting them earlier.”

Punishments for breaching rules around minors are felt not to be strong enough too. In 2021, there have been three agents sanctioned for such breaches.

These are the ones the FA know about. There is a hopelessness about what the FA can do to enforce the rules. “It’s impossible,” says one agent. Some fear people will just find a way around the rules, which is alleged to be happening, such as through using “spotters”, who are unregistered and receive finding fees.

“Normally there is no trail, no whistleblowers,” says an agent. “Everyone in the industry knows the most competitive age group is 14-or 15-year-olds. They want to get ahead of the queue. They’ll send spotters and never get their hands dirty. There are always agents around the best young players. Everyone in the industry knows what goes on but they turn a blind eye.”

There are concerning examples. “(There is) an agent using a guy as an introducer or runner for him,” says another agent. “He had no DBS check and was sending DMs to minors on Instagram. When his DBS check came back, it turned out he had a criminal record as long as his arm. He’s still used by the agent.”

The FA was approached by The Athletic for its observations. “Our regulations go above and beyond the minimum requirements set by FIFA. Any approach from an intermediary to a player before January 1 in the year of their 16th birthday would be in breach of these regulations.

“Intermediaries are prohibited from approaching or entering into a contract with a player between January 1 in the year of their 16th birthday and 18th birthday if written consent has not been provided by a parent or guardian.

“Players and their families also receive education alongside the professional leagues to ensure that they are aware of what is allowed under the regulations and where they can receive support if required.

“All allegations with supporting evidence about potential breaches are thoroughly investigated.”

A statement from the Premier League added: “Everyone involved in football has a responsibility to ensure we protect young players in our academies. There are robust Premier League and FA rules in place to enable action to be taken where breaches have occurred.

“Any breach of Premier League rules by clubs to induce players will result in significant sanctions including academy registration bans. It is also important that any alleged wrongdoing by clubs or intermediaries is reported to the Premier League or the FA.

“In addition, the Premier League provides education to all academy players so they understand the role and responsibilities of agents.”

Back at Kinetic, they are trying to help players achieve their dreams and navigate the potholes that emerge off it.

“Education is the best thing,” says Capon. “You need to understand the red flags. If I hear a player talking about an agent I’ll ask why they need an agent or who it is.

“A lot of kids who come to us are so motivated to become a pro, but a lot of them won’t have a career in football.

“You can be so close to utopia and then it just goes in the blink of an eye. You don’t need someone around you giving you the wrong advice.”

(Additional reporting: Michael Bailey, Andy Jones, Laurie Whitwell, Phil Hay, Philip Buckingham, Roshane Thomas, Nancy Frostick, Adam Leventhal)