The executive director of a new “super agency” has told Off The Pitch that the industry is undertaking a complete transformation, moving towards a “full service management model” and that he would welcome greater regulation of player agents.

He also says that English clubs and players can look forward to great new financial opportunities from the unprecedented talent now produced by the country’s youth academies.

Last week two of Europe’s largest independent football management agencies, England’s Unique Sports Management (USM) and Germany’s International Sports Management (ISMG), announced that they had merged to become Unique Sports Group (USG) with immediate effect.

The deal brings a roster of more than 300 players, including Reece James (Chelsea), Aaron Wan-Bissaka (Manchester United), Hakan Calhanoglu (Inter Milan), Matthias Ginter (Borussia Monchengladbach,) Ryan Sessegnon (Tottenham Hotspur), Callum Wilson (Newcastle United) and Kevin Volland (AS Monaco).

USG claim that its players have a combined market value of £670 million.

The new agency’s executive director, Marlon Fleischmann, describes the deal as “a coming together of two independents with equity shares in each business.”

“It's more of a partnership and alliance than a full takeover,” he says.

“I think we're both specialists in our territories and I think combining that expertise together gives the joint vision much greater reach and knowledge and a network across the two most dominant territories, which is the Premier League and Bundesliga.”

Anglo-German trade

Fleischmann says that the deal is, in part, a recognition of the growing trade in young players between England and Germany, which is “very different now to what it was maybe three or four years ago.”

“I think what's happened now is the strength of the young players we're producing in this country attracts a lot more interest and opportunity across Europe. As agencies we have to go with that adapt and move and become more of European centric than just territories specific.

Back then, he says, “if you’re a Premier League agency or an English agency, you wouldn't need to really look for opportunities abroad for your clients. And in Germany, the same thing. The players would stay and their dreams are to play for the big teams in each in territory.”

Now, he says, there is a golden generation of young English players, who are encouraged by the examples of Jadon Sancho and Jude Bellingham, who have both starred for Borussia Dortmund having left their home country in search of opportunities in Germany.

“I think how we look at it, if you look at our growth in the talent that we're producing in our academy systems, the generations that are coming through have never been so strong. And at the same time, the Premier League is at its strongest.

"So, if you're a young player coming through, your marketplace used to be stay in your academy see if you could break through into your first team in the Premier League. If not, you go to a smaller Premier League club or top Championship club.

“I think now that's different. I think now it's a case of if your pathway in the Premier League isn't going to be there. You can go to a top European club. You may not even need to stay in that academy you'll go to a European opposition instead and that's the biggest change for us.”

Trading places

The opportunities, he says, are twofold. Young English players are getting a chance to shine at the top end of an elite European league and often play in UEFA competition too. Their original English clubs retain high sell on clauses, meaning that as that talents develops they can benefit from a greater sell on fee.

“If you're Man City and you send Jadon Sancho to the Bundesliga, with someone like Dortmund that will produce a longer term a higher sell on percentage than if he'd gone on to , say Fulham,” he says.

Sancho returned to England in a £73 million move to Manchester United this summer, earning City a reported £10 million cut. The England international had originally left City for Dortmund for £8 million in 2017 without making a first team appearance.

“I think putting the players on the European map does increase the valuations because it just puts them to a bigger audience,” says Fleischmann.

Youthful transitions

Fleischmann has built his reputation overseeing the careers of a crop of teenage hopefuls to world stars. Previously, he acted for Tottenham and England captain, Harry Kane.

Reece James, is arguably USG’s most high profile client now and was one of the heroes of Chelsea’s Champions League win and England’s march to the Euro 2020 final.

“I think where we position ourselves is as an elite talent agency,” he says. “Our clients are generally players that have been with us for six, seven, eight years and we build them from academy players into the established stars they are now. So our model is more about how we can secure the best opportunities for those talents.”

Changing models

He agrees that the USG deal reflects a broader shift in the industry towards larger agencies with “a more sophisticated model”.

This will encompass an array of services that help players navigate the complexities of an increasingly digitized, multi-platform world, as well as the personal challenges that come from being megastars.

“I think the industry has to mature,” he says.

“If you look at ICM and Stellar [US mega talent agency ICM acquired Britain’s leading football agents, Stellar, in 2020], everybody at the top level is running very sophisticated agencies. If you look at the agency model ten years ago, it was an agent who did everything: tried to move the players, tried to negotiate... and it wasn't the correct management model.

“I think if you look at how talent has been managed in America, whether that's a musician or an NBA player, there are different strands. I think we've tried to look at how we can maximise the service level to our clients to reflect not only the increased exposure the players are getting here, but the pressures that come with it and the changes in society.

How do we secure them?

“Yes, we have a raft of intermediaries that are there to negotiate contracts or transfer moves or the historical traditional services an agency would do. But we've got an athletic department. We've got a content production department in-house. We've got social media managers in-house. We've got designers in-house, we've got concierge in-house.

“So, we've got a raft of services and infrastructure that was never there under previous agency models. I think it is the industry reflecting that maturity in producing more sophisticated models and really looking at these clients and how do we put 360 service around them? How do we secure them? How do we make sure they get the absolute best from us?

"And we are providing the best services and what goes into making a top level pro footballer both on and off the pitch, and that has to be done jointly, holistically together.

I like to say that there's football agents and there's management models and we're a management model

“I think that's driven how we've formatted and changed our business. I didn't think I'd be here, interviewing for content producers but that's now necessary if you're going to manage at top level client, you have to be able to produce content for social media, for broadcast, for straight to consumer content. You have to do it. Whereas 10 years ago, when I was a younger agent that was never in our thoughts. But that's just how the industry is adapted, and I think it's grown up.”

Defying sterotypes

Fleischmann says it is a “massive source of frustration” that perceptions of player agents still revolve around the old “monster, monster” stereotype of a cigar chomping rogue.

“People have an imaginary guy in their head rubbing their hands together when they hear the term football agents that that isn't reflective of what we are as a business or how we operate,” he says.

“We couldn't be further from that.

“I like to say that there's football agents and there's management models and we're a management model. I think if you're just a popular agent, you've only got one string above. I think as a management model, which we are, we look at the whole and the scope of it.”

He says that the extra services USG provide are not value added, but simply part of their client benefits. FIFA are looking to cap commissions agents can take from transfer deals, but he says that client services are not an income stream they are developing to possibly offset this.

FIFA’s tightening grip

He says he welcomes regulation and reminds me that he once had to sit exams to become a FIFA licensed agent. FIFA completely deregulated that system in 2015, leaving its governance to national member associations – which seemed at odds with the growing internationalization of the game.

Privately, FIFA executives now acknowledge this was a mistake and are actively working to reform agent regulation. A third consultation on the subject is expected soon.

“We're happy to go back to a system where there is quite a lot of regulation. In terms of the capping of commissions, let’s see what happens. I don't know. I don't want to comment on something that hasn't been confirmed. But if the business will have to adapt, we’ll adapt. We're not going to just shut up our shop because there's new regulation.

“We have a very strong business. We have a strong client list and I think the players see the value in not just agents now, but as 360 [degree] management, not just an individual representation.”

With football clubs struggling to come to terms with the financial implications of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, the 2020/2021-season’s January transfer window went down as one of the most uneventful on record.

Take the Premier League, for instance, where many of the world’s wealthiest clubs play their football. Here, despite the vast riches on display, even these super-wealthy clubs aren’t immune to the economic issues brought about by the pandemic, as England’s top flight recorded its lowest ever number of deals in a transfer window.

Indeed, throughout the entire Premier League – undoubtedly the richest in global football – there were just 26 signings in January, which amounted to a little more than half the number of transfers in the same period last season.

Considering the financial hit football clubs have taken as a result of lost ticket sales, the fact they’re choosing to stick with what they’ve got rather than splashing the cash on new players shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

But as well as the economic issues the pandemic is causing for many of our football clubs, was there another reason that explains why even the Premier League’s big boys failed to get new recruits through the door in January?

Brexit Britain and its impact on transfers

Throughout the Brexit debate, much of the conversation was about the economic impact leaving the European Union would have.

Questions about the fishing industry, food regulations and the price of medicine from abroad were all hot topics, but one thing hardly anyone stopped to consider – at least not publicly – was how an exit from the trading bloc would affect the trade of football players to and from Europe.

This appears to have been a major oversight, as new rules and regulations brought in on January 1st have changed the way clubs conduct their transfer business, and these adjustments are already causing recruitment issues for some managers.

Take one Sam Allardyce, for instance. Perhaps no manager embodies the failure to grasp exactly what leaving the EU would mean for the trade of Premier League footballers quite like the former West Brom boss.

Back in 2018, while in charge at Everton, Allardyce was asked how he’d voted in the EU referendum. Pulling no punches, Allardyce was critical of the EU and said he believed it was time the UK withdrew.

“I am out,” Allardyce told the Sun. “My feeling is that the European Union isn’t doing the United Kingdom any favours.”

However, after getting his wish and seeing the UK complete its formal withdrawal, Allardyce was surprised to find the new rules and regulations in place have made purchasing players from Europe much more difficult.

And to Allardyce’s dismay, the new red tape put in place torpedoed his January transfer plans, making his already-difficult job of rescuing the Baggies from relegation even more of an uphill task.

“I have found three players already who were capable of coming here and were not allowed,” he told reporters after watching his side post another defeat.

“It’s a shame. Due to new regulations in terms of the permit they were unable to come to this country, whereas previously they would have done. I have to look at that and think ‘can he qualify?’”

Impact on the Premier League’s product

The new rules, which were agreed by the FA, Premier League and UK government, were designed to help young, homegrown talent prosper, but one of the side-effects of the changes is they’ll create a real hurdle for some transfers moving forward.

In the past, Premier League clubs could complete transfers with relative ease, but now every player arriving from Europe must be in possession of a work permit, which can only be obtained once the player has met a number of requirements.

This will undoubtedly result in the collapse of some transfers that in the past would have gone through without any hiccups.

Additionally, while every transfer will now require more paperwork, some deals are off the table all together. Take the signing of international U-18s, for instance, which are now banned completely under the new rules that state any player signing to or from a European club must be over the age of 18.

Just think of the deals that wouldn’t have happened over the years if these directives had been in place longer: Cesc Fabregas to Arsenal, Jadon Sancho to Borussia Dortmund, Paul Pogba to Manchester United – all historic transfers that would no longer be permitted, which would undoubtedly have an impact on the Premier League’s product.

It’ll be interesting to see how this will affect the viewing figures of the Premier League. With an annual audience of 4.7 billion viewers watching from 643 million homes around the world, the English top flight is by far the most popular football competition on the planet.

However, this popularity has been, at least in part, built by the young and promising overseas talent English teams raided their European neighbours for over the years.

With those deals now prohibited and many transfers being scuppered by post-Brexit restrictions, it remains to be seen whether this will have an effect on the Premier League’s dominance moving forward.

Will clubs start to look elsewhere?

With Europe becoming an increasingly difficult market to sign players from, pundits and football experts have predicted Premier League sides may start to look further afield, with South America and Africa muted as likely destinations.

For fans of the Premier League who enjoy watching these skillful, technically gifted players with magic in their boots, these could be exciting times.

Although British clubs will still need to wait until South American and African players turn 18 – this rule was always in place, and the exemption only existed when signing from other European countries – once they reach their eighteenth birthday they’ll be immediately eligible for transfer.

Moreover, judging by the new system used for granting the work permits, signing these players may be much more straightforward than it was in the past.

Points are awarded for international appearances, and due to the fact competition in some of these countries – particularly African nations – isn’t as high as it is in some parts of Europe, not only do talented young players have a better chance of making it into their respective national sides, but they may already have international caps under their belt. This would make obtaining a work permit for a proposed transfer much easier.

Additionally, the Brazilian and Argentinian leagues are viewed highly by the permit system, and the Copa Libertadores has been given equal weighting to the Champions League.

This means straight away there are 32 sides whose players automatically meet the GBE threshold, while the Copa Scudamericana – the second-tier South American club competition that’s equivalent to the Europa League – also racks up the same number of points, providing another 32 sides to monitor for potential signings.

Add to that the fact youth players are now viewed much more favourably and suddenly we have hundreds of previously ineligible players who are now gettable, making South America a very viable and increasingly attractive option for British clubs.

With Premier League sides expected to turn their focus to these continents, this could well send shockwaves around Europe as many French sides rely on African imports, while the Spanish and Portuguese leagues always have a steady stream of South American talent coming in.

If suddenly there’s increased competition from Britain, will many of the clubs around Europe be able to compete? At a time when the majority of them are seriously struggling in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, given the financial muscle of the Premier League’s biggest sides, the answer might well be no.

Scouting improvements necessary

Despite an increase in competition from British clubs, one advantage teams from elsewhere in Europe have at the moment is in the area of scouting.

Many Premier League clubs simply don’t have the scouting networks in place to upset the order just yet, but with some heavy investment over the next couple of years or so, they could soon start to pick up some of the best talent from under the noses of their continental rivals.

With a significantly wider market, once clubs start to improve their scouting networks then it won’t be hard to find talented players. Whereas in the past it was only permitted to purchase full internationals or those valued above £15 million, many of these players were out the question for most clubs.

However, with the criteria changing, the market is now open to more clubs. Thus, Latin America might be about to receive an influx of scouts from the UK.

In the past, very few players have joined British sides directly from South America. Even fewer have come straight from Africa.

This strategy was viewed as risky, as traditionally players from these countries tended to struggle to adapt to such a different way of life, while the physical intensity of European football can also prove a stumbling block for some.

Instead, British sides preferred to sign players who had already proven themselves elsewhere in Europe, so the vast majority of South Americans in the Premier League came via another league.

There have been exceptions to the rule, though, with the likes of Gabriel Jesus and Richarlison among those plucked directly from their homeland. These two players have proven particularly successful, and the hope will be that more players can adapt to life in the UK as well as those two have.

What’s the conclusion?

With Britain’s exit from the EU only a few months old, it’s still difficult to predict exactly how the divorce will affect the transfer dealings of Premier League clubs, and what subsequent impact this will have on the world’s most popular league.

As time goes by and the dust begins to settle on the pandemic and its economic ripple effect, the picture should start to become a little clearer.

However, if there’s one thing we can be certain of, it’s that the signing of players from Europe has just been made a lot more difficult for Premier League managers, and this may well result in many of Britain’s sides setting their sights on different markets.

Coming from a background in sports journalism, avid football fan Darryl Rigby now works for the Immigration Advice Service in the UK, a law firm that helps people with visa and settlement applications.

FIFA has confirmed that its football ‘clearing house’ will begin handling transfer related payments from 2022, with algorithms under active consideration as a means of determining player’s market value. 

It has also said that reforms to the way agents can operate and be renumerated will be in place by July 2022.

Speaking at FIFA’s annual football law review, Ornella Desirée Bellia, FIFA’s Head of Professional Football, laid out an extensive overview of FIFA’s ongoing review into the football transfer system, which will have seismic implications in the way transfers are handled and fees dispersed.

“As soon as the clearing house starts its operation, all training rewards payment will be made through it,” she said.

“This is a huge a huge development for the football industry and community.”

Electronic player passport

Long term FIFA plans to handle all transfer payments, but for now will use the clearing house to ensure transfer fees are distributed accurately to intermediaries and clubs who were involved in a player’s development or where sell on fees have been agreed with previous clubs.

She suggested there may be a “transition period” but said the system should be in place by next year.

To facilitate the new system all professional players will be allocated digital passports, which details their career moves and training paths.

"Once we have the final electronic player passport, then we can see the distribution of training rewards through the clearing house,” she said.

“The new club pays the clearing house and the clearing house pays to all the training clubs.

“What is very important is to stress is that the clearing house is going to make a compliance assessment of all the clubs that are involved in these payments.

One per cent levy

“The clearing house will make sure that clubs also comply with international and national law concerning money laundering, anti bribery, corruption and so on. And I think this is a very important step also in general for the governance of football and transparency and so on.”

Ms Bellia added that the system for apportioning ‘training costs’ from a players development were being reappraised, having not been revised since 2001.

She said there will be a new 1 per cent levy added on top of all transfer fees, some of which will be redistributed by the world football’s governing body to clubs investing in youth development.

In 2020 there was a global total of $5.36  billion in global transfer fees across 17,077 player transfers, down from a pre-pandemic peak of $7.35 billion.

Further reviews

Ms Bellia said that FIFA’s transfer task force had been delayed by the Covid pandemic, but added that its work had benefited from the longer duration as it had enabled them to expand their work. She said that one of the four main topics were still under consideration were the transfer window, squad size limits, minors and financial regulations.

“The transfer window closing after the competition starts may cause squad instability and can cause integrity issues, and so on,” she said. 

FIFA was also still looking at the issue of squad sizes and said one of its “objectives” was to avoid what she termed “hoarding”.

Speaking about the issue of squad sizes she said:

“Clubs need to avoid the hoarding of players and make sure that clubs acquire new players not just to have a mere financial profit, but because they want to use them,” she said.

She also said that the Task Force Transfer System was looking at more ways to safeguard minors and work better for the interests of players.

Why not create an algorithm

Finally, she said they were looking at ways of regulating football’s financial flows, in order to promote financial stability, club long-term planning, and ultimately a more competitive system. Speaking about player transfer fees she presented potential measures that could be used to curb the inflation and added “Why not create an algorithm to determine player market value,” she said, but did not offer further detail. She stressed that any new regulations must be agreed by all football stakeholders.

The FIFA Task Force, which is made up of representatives of the European Club Association (ECA), clubs not represented by the ECA, the World Leagues Forum, FIFPRo, plus representatives of national associations and confederations, is to report its findings to FIFA’s Football Stakeholders Committee. It then adopts recommendations for the FIFA Council.

Ms Bellia said that she anticipated the majority of reforms to be in place in time for the summer 2022 transfer window.

One of the world’s leading football agents has laid down the battle lines with FIFA over its forthcoming reforms of rules governing the transfer system, warning that if it doesn’t return to the negotiating table with player agents “We're going to be in court in about 30 different countries.”

Jonathan Barnett, head of ICM Stellar Sport, the world’s largest football agency and a vice President of The Football Forum, an agents’ representative body, says that reforms FIFA is set to vote on next month are “anti-trust and also completely illegal.”

Globally FIFA says that £476million was spent on intermediaries in 2019, four times as much as 2015. It has been a key pledge of FIFA president Gianni Infantino to bring this figure down.

Depending on their role in a transfer, under the new regulations, an agent would be limited to taking a one-off sum equal to 3 per cent of a player’s annual salary or 10% of the transfer fee to a selling club. Using last season’s figures this would cut around 40% of the sums paid to agents.

FIFA acknowledge that agents will lose out financially, but claim that the way transfers are conducted will improve. It has been consulting on the changes for the past 18 months.

Agent fury

“They are proposing many rules and regulations. The cap for agents is only one part of it and it's not the only part that we disagree with. People obviously bring that up because it's the relevant part, but it's not the be all and end all,” Barnett told the FT Business of Football Summit.

“If they said to us there's no cap anymore, we would still be against the rules and regulations because they are written by people who don't know anything about what they're doing.”

Consultation doesn’t always mean you get your own way.

Among Barnett’s many complaints about the FIFA reforms is what he terms a “ridiculous” lack of consultation.

“How can you bring in rules for agents and not have a proper consultation? FIFA argue that they have, but I can assure you that there's not one member of the FIFA hierarchy or anywhere that ever set foot in my office. I can assure you nobody has ever set foot in any agent's office.”

He added: “The laws they are proposing are, in our opinion, anti-trust and also completely illegal. If we don't hear from them, what can I say? We're going to be in court in about 30 different countries.”

Inefficiencies and deficiencies

James Kitching, FIFA’s Director of Football Regulatory, denied in a later session at the same event that player agents had been left out of the loop.

“Consultation doesn’t always mean you get your own way,” he said.

Nevertheless he acknowledged that there were “a number of inefficiencies and deficiencies arisen in the system” since FIFA last looked at transfer reform in 2015 that the governing body is looking to rectify.

“[The transfer market] is driven by speculation as opposed to solidarity, particularly when it comes to valuations,” said Kitching.

“There's clear conflicts of interest that exists across all different spectrums. There is what we would call a disproportionate amount of market power that's vested in certain areas. With respect to agents - and I have to stress we're not talking about all agents or even most agents but a minority - one bad apple in the barrel, unfortunately, raises these types of issues.

“There are on certain occasions abusive and excessive practises that we see in the market, which derive from football agents in particular.”

Kitching also dismissed Barnett’s claims that FIFA’s reforms would be considered anti-trust.

“We've taken legal advice. It's very robust and we believe that ultimately we're acting in a way which will be considered compliant from a competition perspective,” he said.

Struggles ahead

Barnett maintained that the door remained open for further negotiation.

“What we propose - and they have completely ignored - is we are prepared to sit down with FIFA with a blank piece of paper and come up with proper rules that they think they need,” he said.

“At the moment, I'm not sure that they need to do any more rules, but we're not averse to talking about it if there is a need for it. But we have to agree what those rules are. And the first priority is to to somebody who knows anything about agents.

“We're going to struggle with FIFA.”

Lee Hemmings has seen first hand the dramatic impact technology can have on an established industry.

He was working as a trader for Goldman Sachs when the internet began to "cannibalise" his job and those of many colleagues. In a relatively short space of time, the days of having 30 to 40 traders on the trading floor were gone. Trades shifted online and a job like Hemming's – a connector between buyers and sellers of stocks and shares – was no longer needed. He could see "the writing was on the wall".

After being made redundant in 2012, Hemmings saw an opportunity to disrupt a new market – one he had only previously observed as an outsider.

"It's happened in a number of markets. If you look at the car market, the property market, the internet just brought efficiency to them," he tells Offthepitch.com.

"So when I was looking at the football market as a fan, I noticed there was an obvious need for some sort of efficiency to be brought in. Especially as it was a global business."

Goal to make transfer market more efficient

Hemmings completed a football industry MBA at the University of Liverpool to refine his idea and gather feedback from those working in football. In January, 2015, his digital transfer platform Player Lens was launched.

Described as "Football's LinkedIn", Player Lens aims to help clubs, agents and players make deals more easily. Clubs can access performance data, advanced analytics and videos of potential targets, registered intermediaries can promote their players, and out of contract players can sign up to search for a club.

By overcoming communication barriers and the need to travel, the goal is to make the transfer market more efficient.

From a commercial perspective, it is a market through which a lot of money flows. 
According to FIFA's Global Transfer Market Report 2019, the value of transfers that year reached a record $7.35 billion (€6bn).

Perhaps understandably in an industry that is still largely shrouded in secrecy to outsiders, the idea of Player Lens was not overwhelmingly welcomed initially.

Lot of inertia in doing things differently

"From outside the industry, there was more of an acceptance of 'yeah, that's obvious' (to make it more efficient). But I think from within the industry at that time, there was a lot of inertia in doing things differently," Hemmings says.

Today, it has become a tool a growing number of clubs use. More than 600 clubs from over 50 countries have used Player Lens, including teams from England's 'Big 6'. Despite transfer business in last summer's transfer window falling up to 40 per cent, Player Lens saw its activity grow 133 per cent.

Player Lens allows agents to access a global network of clubs instantly. This saves a lot of time and significantly improves the options for your players, making sure you get the best opportunity for your client.

"It changes window by window. People use us when they need us," Hemmings says.
Clubs typically use the platform to seek potential signings they might otherwise have been unable to access, or to find buyers for unwanted players.

Clubs can look for potential signings by searching with a variety of filters, from anticipated wages to specific attributes. Player Lens uses data and player video from Wyscout and analysis from Analytics FC to rank players on different abilities, giving clubs more targeted results.

While the information is not intended to replace a club's own scouting or analysis, it is designed to make searches more efficient.

Transparency into a global market

"If we use Asia as an example. Clubs' scouting capabilities are a lot less than clubs in Europe and they have been heavily reliant on using agents in the past. What we've given them is far more transparency into a global market," Hemmings says.

"They're probably the bigger users of our technology and our analytics to actually make player assessments. So, for the clubs without the connectivity and the resources, it's a very valuable product."

Clubs are allowed to access Player Lens for free, with the company taking a "small percentage" of any successful deal completed on the platform.

Other players in this space include TransferRoom and Wyscout Transfer Zone, which both charge clubs using a subscription model.

"The Player Lens platform is free to use for all clubs globally," Hemmings says.

"Whilst there are analytical tools on the platform, the independent nature allows clubs to utilise their existing preferred scouting tools for data and video analysis without incurring any extra cost unless value is brought to the club."

Many players out of work

Individual players and agents – who have been invited to use the platform since last January – must pay a "small administration fee" to sign up.

"We work with some player associations around Europe and they promote our service to their players as a way to find work," says Hemmings, who adds that players can select which countries they would and wouldn't consider playing in.

"In the current environment it's extremely useful because there are a lot of players out of work at the moment."

Hemmings says Player Lens has helped to open up "new channels" for transfers between clubs. For example, early transactions on the platform focused on moving players from South America to Asia and one deal saw a player move from a top four Premier League club move to South America.

For football agents, reducing the cost of doing business is likely to appeal. Despite opposition from so-called "super agents", FIFA is pushing ahead with a proposed cap that would limit intermediary fees to 3 per cent of a player's annual salary or 10 per cent of a transfer.

Retain full control

In 2020, agents received $496.2 million (€405.9m) in commissions, just under 10 per cent of the total transfer fees paid last year.

Pere Guardiola, managing director of agency Media Base Sports, is a big fan of the direct connection Player Lens enables.

"Player Lens allows agents to access a global network of clubs instantly. This saves a lot of time and significantly improves the options for your players, making sure you get the best opportunity for your client," he tells Offthepitch.com.

So what you're finding is that people don't necessarily want to strengthen in the current environment, but they're being forced to, so will look to do it in the most economical way possible.

"Also, the platform allows for direct communication with the clubs, so, as an agent, you retain full control of the negotiations rather than share the responsibility and the fees with another party."
Guardiola is not the only one who sees the potential in a more streamlined transfer market.

When Hemmings pitched the idea of Player Lens to Jose Ramón Capdevila, at the time head of football administration at Real Madrid, he liked the idea so much he joined the company. Capdevila is Player Lens' managing director.

The company's investors include ALK Capital, the US management firm that recently took over Burnley, and Sir Martin Broughton, who was previously chairman of Liverpool. Though he will not reveal Player Lens' annual revenue, Hemmings says the business does not need any additional investment or funding.

Clubs want to reduce costs

In the short term, Hemmings predicts the January transfer window will be relatively quiet, given the stretched finances of many clubs.

"The challenge is the same as it was in summer – the clubs that are looking to bring in players will be doing the bare minimum. People are looking to reduce costs and that's from the top of the game right down to the very bottom," he says.

"The caveat is that clubs need to bring in players because squads are being depleted, because players are playing so many games and players are out because of COVID. So what you're finding is that people don't necessarily want to strengthen in the current environment, but they're being forced to, so will look to do it in the most economical way possible."

As the company looks to the future, Player Lens has added a platform for women's football and Hemmings is optimistic more men's clubs will sign up to a new way of doing business.

"Six hundred clubs sounds a lot, but there's still a lot that we need to get on board." 

According to James Chiffi, the founder of Beyond The White Line, it is no surprise that thousands of players feel left alone with their problems – whether they be mental health challenges, addiction, or financial problems, despite public perception that all players are financially set up and therefore face no issues.

“When we talk to players, we are being told the same story over and over again. We need more help, not enough is being done, but they feel that they have nowhere to go. No one to talk to. They feel that they can’t say to the manager that they are struggling mentally. Or that they feel that their body cannot cope with the physical pressure. Because if they do so they won’t be picked on the weekend. Or they won’t be offered a new contract," explains Chiffi.

So players can’t talk to their employer, as they feel it would make them look weak and jeopardise their status. This is why he created Beyond The White Line, to ensure whilst others focus on performance and finances, there’s an organsiation that is exclusively focused on the human behind the athlete.

"Players feel that they are not able to show that they need help. But sometimes they do. And we want to build an army of support to help them,” says Chiffi, who has been working for almost two years building up a non-profit organisation to affect change within the professional sports industry for athletes and stakeholders alike.

Being taken care of

The vision of Chiffi and Beyond The White Line (BTWL) is written on the webpage: They want to ensure that generations of athletes and those within the ecosystem of sport have a sustainable future within an environment that is “Human First”.

And he does not think that is the case today.

He does not necessarily blame the clubs. Or the agents or other advisers around the athletes.

“Many agents say that they are a 360 agency making sure that the players get all the care they need. And I actually think many agents are doing a big job to make the players feel good and that they shouldn’t pay attention to all sorts of practical things that are being taken care of, so they can keep their head in the game. But the reality is that the agents’ area of expertise is to maximise the earning potential of that athlete. Whilst performance is very much the expertise that clubs are offering. Which in many ways is OK, but we are just trying to cast light on the fact that many athletes are having all sorts of problems that are not dealt with in the clubs. Or by their agents."

And that is where BTWL would like to play a role. They are looking to build an army of support in order to help these players.

"Whether it be a 15-year-old academy player or a 32-year-old player at a Premier-League team," says James Chiffi.

Getting in early

For Chiffi, it all starts with the recognition that it is totally unacceptable that within the football industry there are so many players with major problems, but these problems are not being recognised, and BTWL wants to do more to solve them.

According to data gathered by Beyond The White Line, retired athletes are 285 times more likely to go bankrupt than anyone else.

But when asked by the clubs they did not want to admit that they were using it. They fear the risk of sharing with their employer and need that not conflicting outlet.

Fifty per cent of all professional footballers are bankrupt within five years of leaving the game. One in three are divorced. And more than a third of athletes report symptoms of depression and anxiety - double the national average in England.

The problem that Beyond The White Line is solving for is providing clubs and governing bodies within football an “insider” support structure, a group that understands the football ecosystem, and how the football industry works. With this added expertise, BTWL hopes clubs will be more willing to work with them.

“We are not an “out of touch” helpline. Nor is that what we are trying to build. We aim to make sure that the players rarely have this need, by being proactive. Getting in early, assessing the individuals needs in each key area, road mapping that with them and staying with them throughout the journey provding that consistency they so desperately need in a world that can feel very volatile.  But that is not the case today, and it will take time to bring about this systemic change. Then hopefully in many years from now we will see a reduction in the troubling statistics around these issues via a system that deals with all these things upfront so that players are going to have a great life whether they succeed or not on the pitch.”

Can tap in every day

At this stage, Beyond The White Line is in a pre-launch period and preparing to launch its offering in the spring or in the summer of 2021. To start with, it will focus on the football industry in England, but the ambition is to help athletes in all kinds of sports and in countries all over the world.

In order to break through and make sure it actually gets access to the athletes, it is vital for Beyond The White Line to spread its mission statement and let clubs know, at last, there is a group they can partner with who understands both club operations, and how to still serve the athlete.  BTWL wants to partner with clubs who recognise that they need outsiders to come and help them. And in some ways, Chiffi understands why many clubs are questioning the need for help.

“We are working with a tech partner to put a solution in front of clubs, where players can tap in every day and tell us about their mental well-being. NHS approved, clinically effective app focusing on the prevention, early detection, and self-management of common mental health conditions. This app was tested with two Premier-League clubs. The initial view was: “No, we don’t need this – the players don’t use it”.

But the fact was that almost 90 per cent of the players actually used the app, many several times every week. The data demonstrated that players were telling BTWL that they required the support.

We are something different

"But when asked by the clubs they did not want to admit that they were using it. They fear the risk of sharing with their employer and need that not conflicting outlet. This just tells me that the work we want to do is desperately needed out there,” says Chiffi, who used to work in the music industry as an artist manager. A career from which he has been able to draw many parallels.

Beyond The White Line financial model relies on non-conflicting brand partners, advertising revenue, altruistic investors and more. This is critical as it is absolutely key for Chiffi that the organisation is non-profit, non-biased and non-conflicting.

That football does not define you, you are not a failure if you come out of the game.

“No one working with us should have a financial reason to do this. We respect that the football industry is a multi-billion dollar industry where tens of thousands of people are making a lot of money, whether they are on the playing side, the coaching side or working as advisers. But we are something different. We are independent and we are not doing this to make money. We do this to make sure that anyone in the industry who needs help is provided with some help by someone they can trust 100 per cent and that money is not a barrier to access. Someone with real expertise. It is also important for us that we are teaming up with partners who are excellent at what they do.”

Domino effect

In the future, Chiffi is also convinced that the organisation can create some substantial revenue with their impactful human first content from their network of hundreds or thousands of players around the world.

Beyond The White Line is built on four pillars: Physical and mental well-being, education, career and financial well-being. We are also at the forefront of dealing with challenges like homophobia in sport, racial issues and gender inequality.

It is impossible to foresee when the organisation will have a breakthrough and when clubs and governing bodies will start dealing with these issues, but Chiffi has an idea that there will be a domino effect once the industry understands this is an initiative they should embrace.

“Oviously I want to do something about these big problems. I know that there are foundations around the clubs that do an amazing job, but when it comes to the well-being of their employees, of their staff and players, I want to do more. It is all about putting the resources onto the grass – and if resources spent does not affect your results on the pitch, it is not a priority. But, we are finding data suggests the healthier a player is mentally, physically, and socially, the better they perform on the pitch. We need to do more,” Chiffi says.

Something needs to be done

For him, a turning point came in the launch of a partnership with Oxford City, where the Commercial Director Mick Livesey was supportive from day one.

“They fully backed it, and Mick was the guy leading it. We were put on the back of their shirts. He recognised that we could do more for the players off the pitch. That football does not define you, you are not a failure if you come out of the game. And actually when they played Shrewsbury Town in the FA Cup, Town CEO Brian Caldwell, also embraced the movement as well and they also supported the project, so I feel that we are breaking the ice here. Since then we are working with and talking to several football league clubs and football associations. I have a feeling that they are aware that something needs to be done, and it is my job to convince them that they can still be a well-run club, a sufficient entity and at the same time taking good care of their players and staff,” says Chiffi.

Worldwide spending on agents fell by 24.2 per cent to $496.2 million in 2020 in line with the overall decrease in transfer fees paid this year as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

The findings, outlined in FIFA's just-released annual Intermediaries report, comes as the international governing body prepares to next year implement major changes to the work of agents who are increasingly scrutinized by a wide range of football stakeholders. 

Global spending on intermediaries have since 2014, when FIFA first started tracking, risen from $239 million to an all time high of $654.7 million last year.

Clubs affiliated to UEFA member associations in 2020 accounted for 95.5 per cent of the total spending, with clubs from England, Spain, Italy, Germany, France and Portugal alone responsible for 79.9 per cent.

Unsurprisingly, clubs in England were the biggest spenders, cashing out a total of $110 million, followed by clubs in Italy ($87.9 million), Portugal ($69.2 million), Germany ($64 million), France ($34.3 million), and Spain ($31.1 million).

Agent showdown

FIFA's Football Stakeholders Committee last year recommended agents of releasing clubs should receive a maximum payment of ten per cent from any transfer fee, and a cap of three per cent of the player's pay for player agents and agents of engaging clubs.

As offthepitch.com could reveal back in September, the new regulatory framework is expected to be ready in March 2021 and agents are required to have signed up by January 2022.

Leading agents including Mino Raiola, Jorge Mendes and Jonathan Barnett in January threatened the body with legal action over its plans. Raiola even compared FIFA to a "communist dictator who tells people what they have to do at all times".

There were 2430 international transfers in 2020 in which a player was represented by one or more intermediaries, equating to 14.8 per cent of all transfers, from a figure of 2670 last year.

Players with total wages exceeding $5 million annually accounted for 44.9 per cent of the transactions, while players with wages between $1-5 million accounted for 38.2 per cent. 

It was a tweet that made waves, but the boat that it rocked was not the public target.

“Who gave FIFA EA Sport permission to use my name and face? @FIFPro? I’m not aware to be a member of Fifpro and if I am I was put there without any real knowledge through some weird maneuver,” Zlatan Ibrahimović asked his 7 million Twitter followers on Monday.

Soon after, Gareth Bale chimed in.

Almost exactly 25 years after the landmark Bosman Ruling gave players freedom of contract, it seemed as if a new front was being waged in the way footballers control their incomes by laying stronger claim over their likenesses and intellectual property.

There was confusion

Soon, Ibrahimovic’s agent Mino Raiola was entering the fray, telling the Daily Telegraph that around 300 players were considering legal action over EA’s use of their likenesses. “The system is wrong, and that is a fight that Zlatan wants to take for all players,” said Raiola.

Except at FIFPro’s Amsterdam headquarters and EA’s global HQ in California, there was confusion – as indeed there was throughout the gaming industry.

‘It's strange that he said FIFA were using his image without his knowledge,’ says Miles Jacobson, Sports Interactive studio director, the company behind Football Manager, which utilises similar licensing deals.

‘He does a face scan with them! I mean, what does he think that that massive bit of equipment that comes in and does a full 3D face scan is for?’

Licensing for player likenesses for EA’s FIFA Soccer megabrand is done in a number of ways.

Players can take the cash

Many leagues have their own licensing agreements with EA, but some individual clubs – like Ibrahimović’s team, AC Milan – do too. On top of this there are some individual players – usually at megastar level, like Kylian Mbappe and previously Bale himself – who have deals with the game publisher.

FIFPro also handle some of the licensing, but this tends to be for smaller leagues and not at a level comparable to that with, say, the EPL which insiders say is valued at £40 million.

This isn’t our fight. This isn’t about EA Sports or video games, players or fans.

‘It’s a couple of thousand euros per player,’ says one source with knowledge of the workings outside the Big Five Leagues. ‘FIFPro pass them on to national player associations. Players can take the cash, or sometimes they take services in kind, like wealth planning or legal services.’

Either way, it seemed, Ibrahimović and Bale were covered by IP agreements with either their clubs or leagues or both.

A battle between agents and FIFPro

So what was going on?

On Thursday, three days after Zlatan’s cryptic Tweet, EA gave an insight in a statement.

The licensing arguments, they said, were not their issue, but ‘being played out in social media for effect’.

‘This isn’t our fight. This isn’t about EA Sports or video games, players or fans. It’s a battle between football agents and FIFPro.’

And by ‘football agents’, they meant one in particular: Mino Raiola.

Son of Campania

Mino Raiola was born in Campania in southern Italy in November 1967. His family moved to the Netherlands when he was an infant, setting up a pizza restaurant in Haarlem and developing a small empire of Italian eateries – 11 by the last count. As a child Mino washed dishes and waited on tables, but because he spoke Dutch better than his father became a teenage business emissary for him, negotiating with banks and the mayor’s office.

He set up his own company, Intermezzo, which helped Dutch companies do business in Italy, and by his own account became a millionaire at 19, after buying and selling a branch of McDonalds to a property developer.

The legendary and notorious Italian sporting director Luciano Moggi was an early enemy. He fell out with Pep Guardiola when he dropped Ibrahimović when at Barcelona. Alex Ferguson called him a “twat” after he took a young Pogba from United to Juventus on a free transfer. FIFA fined him for calling Sepp Blatter a “demented dictator”.

Football, however, was his passion. Still only in his early-20s he became involved with the local club HFC Haarlem, where Ruud Gullit had started out, and became technical director before falling out with the other directors. Then, in 1992 Intermezzo assisted in the transfer of Dutch winger Bryan Roy from Ajax to Foggia. A talker, dealmaker and football obsessive, Raiola had found his niche and started building up contacts.

Emergent agent

Raiola’s first real star was the great Czech midfielder, Pavel Nedved, whom he brought from Sparta Prague to Lazio in 1996. In a glittering career in Rome and later at Juventus, Nedved would become one of Italian football’s great players, winning the Balon D’or in 2003.

But the player who elaveted Raiola to the stratosphere of super agents was a Swedish striker of Yugoslav origin named Zlatan Ibrahimović, whom he first encountered in 2001 while an underachieving prodigy at Ajax.

First impressions of the agent, recalls Ibrahimović in his autobiography, was unpromising: “A bloke in jeans and a Nike T-shirt — and that belly, well, like one of the guys in The Sopranos.” But the pair hit it off. Raiola asked him “Do you want to be the best in the world? Or the player who earns most and can show off the most stuff?” Zlatan told him the latter and Raiola agreed to represent him if the player sold his cars and watches and started training “three times as hard”. He warned: “Your stats are rubbish.”

A "twat"

Ibrahimović listened and Raiola took him from Ajax to Juventus in 2004. Then to Inter, Barcelona, AC Milan and PSG by 2012, accruing €115 worth of transfer fees, from which the superagent took his cut – as he would to facilitate the subsequent free transfers to Man Utd, LA Galaxy and back to Milan.

His policy of acquiring a small band of the most talented and dedicated young players on the planet and seeing them through their careers has brought him a devout following among the superstars he’s managed: Nedved, Zlatan, Paul Pogba, Romelu Lukaku, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Mario Balotelli, Henrikh Mkhitarayn. Pogba became the most costly player in the world in 2016; Ibrahimovic and Lukaku have each been, at various stages, the most expensive player based on cumulative fees.

Others have been less enamoured by Raiola’s approach to the art of the deal. The legendary and notorious Italian sporting director Luciano Moggi was an early enemy. He fell out with Pep Guardiola when he dropped Ibrahimović when at Barcelona. Alex Ferguson called him a “twat” after he took a young Pogba from United to Juventus on a free transfer. FIFA fined him for calling Sepp Blatter a “demented dictator”.

Union boss

Nevertheless Raiola takes his responsibilities as an agent seriously.

Last year he co-founded The Football Forum (TFF) with fellow superagents Jorge Mendes and Jonathan Barnett. TFF describes itself as “an international movement of football agents and players” who aim “to identify, implement, and develop the best professional practice of agency in the game.” Raiola is president, with Barnett and Mendes vice presidents.

Beneath the veneer of lofty ideals –promoting ‘high standards of ethics’, ‘player interests’, ‘transparency’ – is, of course, self interest. One of the key pledges of FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s current term has been to reform the way player agents are allowed to operate and FIFA expects to ratify these reforms next March. TFF are not going to give these an easy passage.

Raiola’s organisation are not the only agents group being consulted on these changes, but they may be the most influential and canny.

He can go to North Korea 

Barely had FIFA issued its third and final round of drafts with its consultative partners than Zlatan fired off his tweet. Bale, who also tweeted out, is the most prominent client of Barnett.

“It’s a little bit of a phoney war,” admits a source who is in the crosshairs of the struggle. “It’s a reminder that they can make things difficult and turn up the heat if they want to.”

This is money lost to football. It doesn’t get recycled in the game and filter down through the leagues, like transfer fees. It’s goes outside the game. Gone. Kaput.

Despite naming FIFpro, the player’s union – which hasn’t actually supported the agent reforms yet – isn’t believed to be the true target. That is FIFA.

“We are in a Capitalist world, but Gianni Infantino wants us to become North Korea,” Raiola told the World Football Summit on Thursday. “I have no problem with North Korea, but he can go live there and not me.”

FIFA threat

There is much at stake under the new FIFA guidelines. Globally FIFA says that £476million was spent on intermediaries last year, four times as much as 2015.Agents took £318million from English clubs alone in the 12 months to 31 January, accounting for around a fifth of its transfer economy.

“This is money lost to football. It doesn’t get recycled in the game and filter down through the leagues, like transfer fees. It’s goes outside the game. Gone. Kaput,” says one figure who has lobbied at a global level to rein in agent fees.

Depending on their role in a transfer, under the new regulations, an agent would be limited to taking a one-off sum equal to 3 per cent of a player’s annual salary or 10 per cent of the transfer fee to a selling club. Using last season’s figures this would cut around 40 per cent of the sums paid to agents.

FIFA acknowledge that agents will lose out financially, but claim that the way transfers are conducted will improve.

A little bit brave

“We have evaluated that by introducing these rules, the minimum standards and ethical standards will rise,” FIFA’s chief legal and compliance officer, Emilio García Silvero said earlier this month.

“The easiest thing for us to do would be nothing, but we would like to be a little bit brave in this area,” he said.

“We are very aware that there are some groups that are not happy with some part of the drafts, but we need to protect football from abuses and speculative practices.”

Communist dictators

But no representative body is going to want to see their earnings harmed in such a way.

Earlier this year Raoila likened FIFA to a “communist dictator who tells people what they have to do at all times.”

Complaining that FIFA was becoming too powerful and all encompassing, he added: “FIFA today wants to be everything: the government, the commercial part, the legal part... and that is impossible.”

He can kick off a social media storm, get some of the biggest players in the planet involved and call into question one of its biggest commercial partnerships.

He declared then that he was done with arguing with FIFA and would only negotiate when they took their agent reform proposals off the table. “We don't need FIFA,” he said.

A bit of a phoney war

While recognising Raiola’s power, few took his claims as anything other than bravura – until this week, and Zlatan’s tweet.

“It just shows the influence he and other big agents have,” says one source who is party to FIFA’s consultative process. “He can kick off a social media storm, get some of the biggest players in the planet involved and call into question one of its biggest commercial partnerships.

“It’s a bit of troublemaking and a bit of a phoney war at the moment. But it shows that when the final decisions are made, his presence will probably be felt.”

Contractual certainty is hard to argue against, but its importance has been particularly emphasised this year in light of the unprecedented nature of the coronavirus pandemic.

One specific matter to look at is in terms of commission-based contracts which in football tends to rely on a certain amount of implicitness. That has proved to be problematic, according to lawyers at Cooke Young & Keidan (CYK), with reference to a recent High Court verdict between Liverpool and a sports marketing firm.

The club in September won a case against Winlink who had claimed last season's Premier League champions owed it £1.125 million because the firm introduced Liverpool to gambling company BetVictor in 2013 before a £5 million-a-year-deal training kit deal was agreed in 2016. Therefore, Winlink believed it was entitled to commission, but the court did not find this to be the case as Winlink was not the "effective cause" of the deal.

As litigators we are seeing a trend generally of people who are trying to get out of their payment obligations any which way they can

"Winlink wasn't the exclusive agent, so any other agent could have been working on Liverpool and connecting them to potential sponsors," explains CYK associate Shelley Drenth, who specialises in commercial disputes and regulatory investigations.

"That meant there was material risk Liverpool could have ended up paying two different sets of commission to two different agents for the same transaction, and that would have been a very uncommercial outcome." 

So, although the contract did not explicitly say so, the judge read Winlink's contract to require Winlink to have been the "effective cause" of any sponsorship deals.

Counting pennies 

Instead of Winlink, Liverpool said in the case, it was their then head of global partnership sales Raffaella Valentino who "personally negotiated the deal with BetVictor's CEO, her friend Andreas Meinrad", shortly after she joined the club in 2015.

And the judge agreed, saying "the transaction was one that owed its genesis to the long-standing commercial relationship between Ms Valentino and Mr Meinrad." 

"As litigators we are seeing a trend generally of people who are trying to get out of their payment obligations any which way they can, given the need to count pennies until we have more of a steer on what the future might hold," says another CYK associate, Jake Calvert, who specialises in sports-related disputes.

Obviously if it's expressly written into the contract, it doesn't need to be implied

"So, it's particularly important that people are conscious of this judgment and how it clarifies the law in this area." 

Shelley notes that in the contract Winlink was engaged under, the firm was not required to do anything but make an introduction, and it could therefore in theory make an introduction and do nothing before an actual transaction occurred – something the court viewed as another uncommercial outcome.

Dealing with the matter upfront

So, how do you avoid a dispute like this from occurring? Calvert explains:

"The starting point is people should be looking to deal with the effective cause issue upfront, by agreeing at the outset when they are having commercial negotiations whether or not the agent is required to be the effective cause of a transaction in order to be entitled to commission from it, and specifying this in the written contract" he says.

Meaning, that by explicitly dealing with the matter in the contract, you won't have to worry about whether or not the court will imply it, removing the uncertainty and lowering the risk of litigation.

"Obviously if it's expressly written into the contract, it doesn't need to be implied. Then it's open and shut," Calvert says.

If it turns out you paid the money in circumstances where you shouldn't have it could potentially have cause of action under unjust enrichment

Shelley elaborates: 

"If the contract does not deal with this issue expressly, and the parties end up in a legal dispute, the key is to show the Court that if they don't read an 'effective cause' term into the contract, there is a risk the principal will have to pay two separate commissions," she says.

"The Court will see that as being a highly uncommercial outcome which the parties obviously didn't intend when they entered into the contract." 

Besides sports marketing agents such as Winlink, this issue also applies to various other players in the football world that operate on a commission-based fee structure, such as player agents/intermediaries. 

"An agent who knows they are not going to be paid if they don’t play an effective causative role on a particular transaction isn't going to waste their time doing things on a deal they know they are not going to end up being the effective cause of," Calvert says.

Scrutinising contracts

If a dispute occurs and the court asks for evidence to be provided, it will be crucial for the parties to be able to provide copies of correspondence in form of emails, phone calls etc. Any agent working on a commission basis should always carefully preserve these records, to increase their chances down the track of proving that they were the "effective cause" of the deal. 

Both Shelley and Calvert expect the topic to be important moving forward but it could also apply to contracts already committed to. 

If it's a significant amount of money there would be no harm in seeking legal advice

"If it turns out you paid the money in circumstances where you shouldn't have it could potentially have cause of action under unjust enrichment," says Calvert.

"People should be looking at their contracts in light of this decision and consider whether the contract can be varied and whether they want to vary it."

Shelley points out one potential pitfall, however:

"If you've already paid under a particular contract it would be more difficult to get the money back. But if it's a significant amount of money there would be no harm in seeking legal advice on whether or not you have any way of recovering it if you think it was wrongly paid."