With a Foreword by Roger Blanpain, Professor in Labour Law, Universities
of Leuven (Belgium) and Tilburg (The Netherlands) and co-founder and
first President of FIFPro.
Publicly, at least, there appears to be a strong collective will within
football to clean up the game, to make the work of players' agents more
transparent and to allow a greater share of the game's profits to stay
within the game. Privately, there seems to be unease that current agent
regulation is out of step with football industry norms and that if the
sector is to operate effectively, practices which are prohibited by the
rules should in fact be tolerated. Here lies the problem. Stringent
agent regulation may well look impressive but over-regulation will
merely compound the problem of non-compliance and a lack of
transparency. Finding the balance which not only addresses the problems
facing football and satisfies the supporters and other interested
stakeholders but which also satisfies the requirements of national, EU
and international law is just one of the many challenges facing
football's governing bodies.
What are players' agents? Why should they be regulated? How should they
be regulated? These three apparently simple questions have been tackled
throughout this book. The first question appears straightforward as
agents perform similar functions throughout the world. However, as the
contributions in the book reveal, the manner in which agents operate
varies. The questions of why and how to regulate again reveals common
themes but also considerable variations in patterns of regulation. In
this connection, there are, in effect, three tiers of agent regulation:
international law, national law and the law of the sports associations.
This book covers the legal regulations governing players' agents in
forty countries around the world, representing the major footballing
constituencies including Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Russia as well as
the "Big Five" in Europe. Written by acknowledged experts, it provides a
very useful and informative comparative survey. Indeed, this is a book,
which all those involved in the administration of football clubs,
particularly, coaches and managers, as well as players' agents
themselves, and commercial, financial and legal advisers, can do hardly
do without, as it will provide them with a constant and useful source of
reference.
