Manchester United paid £11m to players’ agents since 2003

The Premier League club accounts showed it paid £5.5m to agents in the 12 months to 31 July, and owed a further £3.5m from past deals. The report does not include a payment of £1.5million to Paul Stretford’s Proactive Sports Management as part of Wayne Rooney’s £27m deal from Everton last month. The lion's share of the millions paid went to other four agents: the biggest chunk was paid to Pini Zahavi, the Israeli who has received £1.8m. Zahavi was paid £825,000 for his role in Rio Ferdinand's £30m move to United and £0.5m for helping to move Juan Veron to Chelsea last summer. He was also paid £0.5m for his part in the £12.5m transfer of Louis Saha from Fulham to United in January. Rodger Linse, represents Ruud Van Nistelrooy who joined the club in 2001. The fees due to Linse were staggered over the contract period, with £468,000 still owed. The player’s contract extension in January this year raised those fees to £1.67m. Giovanni Branchini, Cristiano Ronaldo agent pocket £1.13m from the player’s transfer last year. Alex Black, the agent for Alan Smith, was paid £750,000 when the striker moved from Leeds United after the end of last season. The club has also paid £525,000 to Argentinean Gabriel Heinze agent. Further £500,000 had gone to the agents involved in selling Juan Sebastian Veron to fellow club Chelsea, making a total of £11m paid to agents since the start of August 2003. It was the first time that agents' fees have been detailed on a transfer-by-transfer basis by a football club and comes as pressure mounts for all clubs to lay bare the finances of player transfers. Dr Bill Gerrard, professor of sport management and finance at Leeds University Business School, claims that clubs are being forced to pay high levels of agents’ fees in order to acquire players they want. “Agents representing top players are effectively taking the position that ‘you won’t get access to a player; you won’t get the deal if you don’t go through me. I understand why players need to employ agents, because they would not typically have the legal expertise to negotiate a contract, but the biggest clubs in the world have legal expertise in house, they have their own scouting staff. There is nothing agents provide them in terms of service, so why pay £5m to agents? It has been paid because if they had not they would not have got the players.” David Gill, Manchester United's chief executive, defended the payments to agents as representing good value for the club. He insisted that agents were an essential part of the modern game, but added that publicizing agents' fees was one way of trying to cut them over time.

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