Raiola is currently trying to negotiate a
deal for PSG to bankroll the Swede's
departure from Paris. They want rid of
Ibrahimovic apparently and, in football,
even waste disposal has a price.
Aidy Ward, presumably, worships at the
altar of Raiola. How else could you read
his work as Raheem Sterling's agent this
week and his unleashing of a blow-torch
to the concept of negotiation? Ward's
interview with the London Evening
Standard attempted to belittle the club
with whom his client still has two years of
a contract to run. He essentially told
Liverpool that they did not matter.
Now there may be many out there who
hold with that general world view, given
the Merseyside club's clear need to take a
long, hard look at how it functions.
But even the least sanctimonious of
football people should swallow hard if
Ward's lottery numbers come up on this
one. To make good money this summer,
he needs one if not both of his high-
profile clients, Sterling and Saido
Berahino, to leave their current
employers. Ward would, it is true, get a
generous percentage of any contract
renovation for his players at Liverpool or
West Brom respectively. But that's just
pocket-money compared to his cut of a
multi-million transfer.
So Ward pursues the big hit - it's what
most football agents do. And because of
their hold on the game, because of the
inordinate influence that people like
Raiola and Jorge Mendes and Pini Zihavi
now bring to bear on the market, even
the great football clubs dance to someone
else's tune now.
Zihavi is credited with introducing the
dubious concept of third-party ownership,
where private investment consortiums
purchase a percentage of a player's rights
in the hope of reaping a profit in future
transfer deals. They might as well be
dealing in bonds.
Culture
The culture now is that big agents hold
more sway then than the big managers
even and Ward, palpably, wants to be one
of them.
So Sterling, particularly, becomes the
vehicle through which he hopes to get
recognised as a front-rank dealer.
However urgently the player might want
to leave Anfield now, few can doubt the
desperation of his agent to see it happen.
All of which has made for his profoundly
depressing conduct this week and the
sense that even the illusion of loyalty in
football can now formally be
decommissioned.
When Ibrahimovic took on Raiola as his
agent at Ajax, he admitted that he did so
because "he was completely fearless and
prepared to pull any number of tricks,
and that sounded good. I didn't want to
have another nice boy."
When they went into negotiations with
Juventus, Raiola turned up sweat-
drenched in Hawaiian shorts, a Nike T-
shirt, running shoes with no socks "and
that belly, like one of the guys in The
Sopranos."
Ibrahimovic warmed instantly to the
sense of someone resolutely hostile to the
old ways of doing business, to someone
willing to by-pass the often stultifying
orthodoxy of agent-club communication.
Raoila, like him, had a working-class
upbringing, something he would
consistently express without resort to
"sugar-coated crap".
They became a marriage made in heaven,
Ibrahimovic declaring in his
autobiography "Mino wasn't just a nutter,
he also landed the deal."
If Aidy Ward now lands the Sterling deal,
say a £50m move to Manchester City or
Chelsea (though it's doubtful either would
pay that much), the monstrous scale of
the finance involved will transform his
status in the industry. So telling Liverpool
that he doesn't care about the PR
argument and calling Jamie Carragher "a
knob" will serve only to accentuate the
sense of a ruthlessly single-minded
operator.
Whether we like it or not, that's what
most professional footballers want in
their corner.
Sterling's only concept of loyalty will be
to his family and, if there is a market
willing to pay him twice the salary
Liverpool can offer, he is unlikely to be
burdened by anything as cumbersome as
a conscience as this tawdry affair plays
out.
Liverpool will play hard-ball to a point,
but only to protect their bargaining
position. And Ward? He can blithely wait
to see the lottery numbers fall, all the
time wearing his ignorance like a badge.
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