adminRay Bande Senior Sports Reporter
AT the beginning of every domestic Premiership season, the Footballers Union of Zimbabwe (FUZ) grapples with not less than 30 cases of football players failing to get their dues from clubs after rendering their services.The trend repeats itself during the July mid-season transfer window.
This is the sad reality of the burden that players in the domestic top-flight league have to bear irrespective of the fact that players just like each and every one of us have bellies and families to feed.
To make matters worse for players, more than half would hardly get their dues even after FUZ’s intervention.
Many more choose to remain silent.
Interestingly, the depressing situation continues to prevail not only in Zimbabwe, but in most soccer playing nations given the saddening statistics pointing out that only up to 30 percent of international transfers used to be logically concluded.
It is against this gloomy background that the world football governing body — Fifa — has now made major changes in the handling of player transfer deals.
Under the new Fifa rules — finalised in 2009 and which came into effect on April 1, 2015 — contract negotiations between players and clubs are no longer facilitated by licenced football agents, but by intermediaries.
Fifa are on record saying that the reform was conceived precisely to curb the deplorable practices that had arisen in the player transfer business.
Of late, football agents were required to take examinations before obtaining a licence and were not duly and wholly accountable to federations or associations.
The intermediaries are now asked to register by ‘self-certifying’ to their football association that they have an ‘impeccable reputation’ and no conflict of interest.
Players and clubs are now required to disclose to their football association the full details of each transaction an intermediary is involved in.
According to Fifa, the new system should be more transparent, effective and simple to administer and implement, resulting in better and more efficient enforcement at national level.
Football associations can introduce any additional requirements they deem necessary to allow intermediaries to operate professionally.
The English FA, for example, has established that individuals representing minors need to provide a criminal record check from an official body to obtain specific authorisation.
But fear abounds that many football associations will just comply with just the minimum criteria thereby exposing players to greater risk.
Sadly, for one reason or the other, the introduction of intermediaries remains largely unknown to many key stakeholders of the game in Zimbabwe.
Whether players in Zimbabwe stand to benefit or should they brace for tougher times ahead, it remains an unchartered territory.
Like the shroud of Turin, the relevance of intermediaries to football in Zimbabwe remains unexplored.
It remains a story untold.
The hymen to the relevance of intermediaries to Zimbabwean football lies intact.
A virgin story!
Premier Soccer League head of secretariat, Kenny Ndebele, when contacted for comment on the introduction of intermediaries, said he was not yet well versed with the parameters of their operations.
“There is something like that, but I still have to get official communication. You will have to give me more time to research on it and make an official comment.
“Judging by what has been transpiring here in Zimbabwe for a long time, I would rather have players negotiate their own contracts. Players have been short-changed even by well known player agents hence the only solution is for the player to negotiate his or her own contract,” said Ndebele.
Zifa spokesperson, Xolisani Gwesela, concurred that the introduction of intermediaries has not been well publicised in Zimbabwe and there is need for his organisation to conduct some form of workshop to raise awareness on the operations of intermediaries.
“Yes, it has been adopted worldwide. Intermediaries have taken over from agents and they are licenced by the association. I think we will need to have a workshop to raise awareness on the operations of intermediaries.
“The workshop will be aimed at taking prospective intermediaries through regulations on how they should deal with the players. It is something that has come from Fifa,” said Gwesela.
Queried whether Zifa will not end up abusing its powers in licencing intermediaries by merely licencing their preferred personalities and disallowing others, Gwesela said: “The association knows its people. We will not give licences to everyone, but it will be given to those whom we deem credible and deserve it.
“In fact, we will stamp our authority. We will take all the necessary prerequisites into account such as the issue of their track record in football as well as their criminal record,” said Gwesela.
However, the Footballers Union of Zimbabwe secretary-general, Paul Gundani, who was evidently conversant with the introduction of intermediaries, said the change from player agents to intermediaries would not help much to improve the welfare of our players in Zimbabwe.
“The introduction of intermediaries is a step in the right direction, but it has its own challenges. It is unfortunate that intermediaries are now operational, but even football administrators here are not aware of the development. In our situation, players might really want to know how to navigate to get what belongs to them whenever disputes or discontent arises.
“The problem that we have in Zimbabwe is that we have a poisoned system where the board of directors of the PSL are predominantly club owners or club directors. They run clubs and at the same time they are the people we expect to hear cases of clubs failing to pay players.
“The leader of the PSL board of directors Twine Phiri, for example, owns CAPS United and the club has breached the players’ contracts on so many occasions. We suddenly now expect the same person to stand up and speak against the abuse of CAPS United players’ rights. No, we cannot.
“We are saying there should be willingness at PSL board level to ensure players’ protection. Our hope is that the intermediaries are now accountable even more at federation level, there will be an independent committee to look into that. Zifa might just play a monitoring role,” he said.
However, at a global scale, some key stakeholders in the game are concerned that scrapping of the agents licencing system will increase the risk of frauds and abuse.
To them, this is a catastrophic reform for the protection of players, particularly young ones, and especially here in Africa.
Cursory online research has revealed that concerns have been raised by Jake Marsh, head of training and youth protection, sport integrity, at the International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS) in Doha.
Marsh argues that football, and sports in general, should adopt more business-like practices.
“(The reform) opens players up to more forms of exploitation,” Marsh said. “We could potentially see more trafficking and it will become harder to investigate.”
“I don’t know of many other industry where intermediaries can self-certify their good character, where a broker isn’t properly vetted, regulated or has professional standards.”
This is because the new rules remove the independent vetting and scrutiny of those coming into contact with young footballers and replaces that with a ‘self certifying process’.
Academy and young players often publish their videos and provide contact details on social media in order to be noticed by scouts. And that is where fake agents often approach them. The criminals then offer the possibility of participating in trials.
As one of its merits that downplay unnecessary and slavery-like talent exploitation, the new regulations prohibit the compensation of intermediaries involving players under the age of 18.
Zifa, like Fifa has been urged to do more in educating football stakeholders about intermediaries.
For Fifa, raising more awareness on intermediaries among youngsters in Africa, would be part of the solution to eradicate the problem of fake agents. More importantly for member associations such as Zifa, ‘players really want to know how to navigate to get what belongs to them whenever disputes or discontent arises during transfer deals’.
Online Reporter