Pity The Poor Agents

There isn't a great deal to laugh about during the current crisis, so perhaps a touch of schadenfreude might be in order if it is concentrated on those bastions of honesty, the football agents! You can see them now, down to their last pair of loafers without socks and feeling the strain as there are no clubs for them to 'stalk' in their usual manner. Gone are the days when they could lean out of the blacked out windows of their 'Overfinch's' offering youngsters and veterans alike treats from their pockets, all they can now do is try to 'disturb' players who are already happy where they are with promises of riches elsewhere.

Of course it is not only West Ham United who find that their best players are supposedly going here, there and every where, in the past whenever there has been an international break or when it is closed season the 'rumours' start to appear, however the current Covid pandemic has halted many of the agents in their tracks. Willie McKay, Barry Silkman and Mark Curtis have all been associated with Hammers' transfers, even Peter Harrison who was pre-Sugo but was involved in bringing Lucas(h) Neill to West Ham during the biscuit baron times, a deal that earned him just shy of £1 Million as early as 2011.

Interestingly young players have been forced to 'think' about life and it's values while at the same time trying to entertain themselves WITHOUT having the ego's massaged by greedy agents, unsurprisingly most of them have taken to gaming platforms to entertain themselves, that is when their not Instagramming, snap chatting, face timing or what else they get up to in order to maintain their profile. Although interest in FIFA has obviously been increasing from players and their fans, CS:GO, Dota 2 and League of Legends remain the most popular events that people are watching and betting on according to esportsbettingtop, there is only so much time fans and players can manoeuvre a football around using a hand set after all!

When football eventually returns, it will almost undoubtedly be with very restricted attendants and played behind closed doors in order for this season to be completed, by completing the season the extremely complicated promotion, relegation, champion's and europa league conundrums can be solved. One thing for sure though, is that the bloated transfer fees and market having ground to a halt in the current climate, are going to transform beyond recognition. The upmarket pawn brokers and second hand 'luxury' car traders are going to have a field day cherry picking the ill gotten gains of those agents who forgot to put something aside for when the gravy train finally halts, and to many onlookers it will be exactly what the agents deserve!

It really is quite astonishing the power and influence agents had up until the middle of march, and it is not just people like Stellar Groups Jonathan Barnett or Jorge Mendes, but also 'people' like Kia Joorabchian who fronts the once very questionable Media Sport Investment group. Back in the day, Joorabchian was head of a consortium that had nearly concluded the take over of West Ham before Terence Brown took the coin from Eggert's Icelandics instead, as a result Joorabchian 'accidentally' let slip that the two players he had 'parked' at the club weren't actually properly registered, hence Javier Mascherano and Carlos Tevez were thrust in to what eventually became a very expensive spot light!

The situation that evolved still irks many Hammers' fans, because having already been fined £5 Million for 'incorrect' player registration, the club were then forced to pay out a further £25 Million to Sheffield United as a result of a 'corrupt' media driven and brilliantly orchestrated claim given credence at the time by Dan Rowan while he was still at Sky before he got canned for being too big for his own boots, he ended up at the BBC of course and is now their 'senior' football writer, we at the Org wonder if he remembers how smug he was outside the court hearing, and how convinced he was that there would be a points deduction as well, a loathsome character who even Murdoch couldn't bare in the end.

There will always be agents, and there are some who do a really good job, however they tend to be the exception rather the rule, and the rest may have to crawl from whence they came when the true extent of their profligacy and power is revealed, the longer the wait for football to return, the more they will lose their influence, and good riddance to them too! - Ed