#AgainstModernFootball - agents

How does a transfer happen? Well, it requires hard-nosed negotiation, nerve and plenty of paperwork (usually sent by fax machine). In the case of Henrikh Mkhitaryan’s pending switch to Manchester United it also requires a chair to be thrown across a room. That was the moment Borussia Dortmund finally buckled on allowing the Armenian to leave.

At least that’s what will go down in folklore. The chair in question was chucked by Mkhitaryan’s agent Mino Raiola in the midst of a temper tantrum at Dortmund’s refusal to accept Man Utd’s offer for his player, and it illustrated just how far agents will go to push through transfers. They’re so powerful not even office furniture is safe.

But how did football agents become so powerful in the first place? Why is it the case that the sport’s great and good now bow at the feet of those who are fundamentally nothing more than administrators and brokers? Even football’s most powerful, like Jose Mourinho or Pep Guardiola, need agents on their side. How did it come to this?

Not even Sir Alex Ferguson - a man so intimidating Roy Keane is still scared to pick up his belongings from the Old Trafford dressing room - could get the better of agents, with the most infamous episode coming between the Scot and Raiola over the future of Paul Pogba.

“There are one or two football agents I simply do not like and Mino Raiola, Paul Pogba’s agent, is one of them,” Ferguson wrote in his autobiography. “I distrusted him from the moment I met him. We had Paul under a three-year contract, and it had a one-year renewal option which we were eager to sign. But Raiola suddenly appeared on the scene and our first meeting was a fiasco.” Enough of a fiasco that Raiola threw a chair across the room?

If football is now the domain of the rich and greedy, agents are the manifestation of that. Over £46 million was paid to players’ agents by Premier League clubs last season, with that figure as high as £115 million in 2014. Man Utd alone have splurged £10 million into the accounts of agents over the past year. It’s the footballing equivalent of buying tickets for a gig only to have to part with a so-called ‘booking fee’ as well. It’s nothing more than a way to line the pockets of others who have weighed the system in their favour.

It used to be the case that clubs would approach clubs over the transfer of a player. Now they approach agents, like a visitor to a price comparison website. It’s then up to the agent to move their player around clubs, like a prize horse around stables, by any means necessary. The process might be ugly, but that is the duty of the modern day football agent.

Take Manchester United, for instance. Jorge Mendes - the agent of Cristiano Ronaldo, David De Gea and countless other elite stars - was once on speed dial at Old Trafford. He delivered Angel Di Maria to United for a Premier League record fee, also brokering the deal that saw Jose Mourinho appointed manager there this summer. Now, however, the signing of Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Henrikh Mkhitaryan, as well as the pursuit of Pogba, suggests Raiola is now the most trusted of the untrustworthy at United.

Clubs treat agents like high street stores. While Manchester United used to shop at Jorge Mendes’ store, even using loyalty card points to sign Radamel Falcao, now they have taken a liking to Raiola’s stock this summer. Like a cheeky chappy urging customers to come inside and take a look, Raiola is offering Mourinho and United his finest wares.

Football is much more cynical and shady place with agents directing clubs and managers whichever way they please. Can agents really be trusted to do what is truly best for their clients when such colossal sums of money are being pushed pushed across the table? It’s like asking Sylvester to make the best decision for the welfare of birdlife while dangling Tweety into his mouth.

Of course, not all agents are cash-hungry, power-driven ego-maniacs only driven by their own self-interest. There are some out there who have the interests of their clients at heart. Even Mendes - one of the sport’s most notorious agents - could claim to have had a hand in the development of Ronaldo as one of football’s greatest ever. The Portuguese has even labelled his agent as something of a father figure to him.

But at this time of year, with the transfer window open and fax machines around European footballing whirring into life, agents are like werwolves when there’s a full moon. Maybe that’s Riola’s next move in his efforts to push through a move.