By Tariq Panja
 |
| Gianni Infantino |
The proposals, detailed in an internal FIFA report created at Infantino’s behest, would represent the biggest overhaul of the transfer system since its inception.
Infantino had vowed to take on the transfer market — a chaotic world in which clubs and agents broker transfers with whispered rumors, secret promises and hidden fees — after he was elected two years ago. He convened the FIFA task force that created the report to address a series of issues, including the spiraling costs associated with contracting top players; concerns about the behavior of agents in the process; and growing numbers of stories about dubious financial practices in a global transfer market worth about $6.5 billion a year.
The proposed changes may set up yet another showdown between Infantino and some of soccer’s richest clubs and leagues, which pushed back this year against his $25 billion plan to remake the club World Cup and which see few problems with the status quo.
The proposal, which was circulated to key stakeholders and obtained by The New York Times, includes plans for a new central clearinghouse that would be responsible for processing payments for all cross-border transfers, including commissions paid to agents. Those fees could be capped at 5 percent of a player’s total salary, or of the transfer fee.
But the most eye-catching changes, and potentially the most significant ones, could be those seeking to limit how much clubs would be allowed to spend for players, a figure that reached a record in 2017 when the French champion Paris St.-Germain paid a record $262 million for the Brazilian forward Neymar.
 |
| The Portuguese agent Jorge Mendes, whose clients include Cristiano Ronaldo and dozens of other top players. |
Proposals under consideration include using an algorithm to benchmark a player’s price and a system to punish clubs that surpass it with a form of luxury tax shared with the player’s previous clubs. The FIFA committee also raised the possibility of salary caps based on a percentage of a team’s revenue as a mechanism to prevent teams from falling into financial difficulty, and the insertion of fixed buyout clauses in the contracts of professional players, similar to those in place in countries like Spain and Portugal.
It was not clear how much support FIFA would have for any of the proposals.
Days after Neymar’s move more than doubled the world transfer record Manchester United had set a year earlier, a top executive at United told the club’s shareholders on a conference call, “As an industry and a market, we don’t think it has major issues.”
By centralizing payments, FIFA hopes to ensure that teams that develop young players receive the training compensation they are entitled to from the proceeds of transfers. Currently, millions of dollars in these so-called solidarity payments — meant to reward small clubs that develop players who eventually become worth millions — go unpaid. To smooth the process, FIFA would propose a digital player passport that would record the teams a player has signed for starting at age 12.
Proposals under consideration include using an algorithm to benchmark a player’s price and a system to punish clubs that surpass it with a form of luxury tax shared with the player’s previous clubs. The FIFA committee also raised the possibility of salary caps based on a percentage of a team’s revenue as a mechanism to prevent teams from falling into financial difficulty, and the insertion of fixed buyout clauses in the contracts of professional players, similar to those in place in countries like Spain and Portugal.
It was not clear how much support FIFA would have for any of the proposals.
Days after Neymar’s move more than doubled the world transfer record Manchester United had set a year earlier, a top executive at United told the club’s shareholders on a conference call, “As an industry and a market, we don’t think it has major issues.”
FIFA and Infantino see things differently. Within months of taking charge, Infantino called for the global transfer system — which essentially operates with rules devised two decades ago, when global soccer revenues were a small fraction of what they are today — to be “seriously revised.”
“The perception is that there is something strange happening with these transfers,” Infantino said at the time. “After 15 years it is time to seriously revise it and bring in maybe a little bit more transparency and a little bit more clarity in terms of the rules.”
Even before his arrival at FIFA, Infantino had expressed frustration at the way the transfer market had developed into a business in its own right, attracting speculators looking to profit from player trades in the same way investors in other markets traded commodities or financial products.
“The original rules had not intended to create a market,” wrote the authors of the FIFA report, titled, “White Paper — Transfer System Reform 2018.” There should be, the authors wrote, a “renewed focus on solidarity rather than speculation.”
Central to the changes would be the creation of the clearinghouse, which would be administered by a third-party organization that would in turn hire a commercial bank to handle payments. Among the benefits of such a structure, the report argues, would be greater transparency in a market that has more than doubled in size just since 2011.
 |
| The agent Mino Raiola negotiated Paul Pogba's record move to Manchester United in 2016. |
Any proposals, even if they are accepted by FIFA’s board, are unlikely to be adopted soon. The report predicts that it will take as long as two years for the clearinghouse to be set up, and there is no timetable to conclude talks on measures to limit transfer fees.
Changes that may be adopted as soon as this year concern the number of players teams can register to their rosters and limits on the loan system. Some argue that bigger, richer clubs use loans as a way of hoarding talent; others contend that multiple loans to a single club can destabilize competitive balance in smaller leagues.
Rather than an all-out ban on the practice, which had been discussed, FIFA is likely to introduce a cap on the number of incoming and outgoing loans to between six and eight, and a cap on the number of players one team can loan to a single club to three. The measure would affect several major teams across South America and Europe, which have in some cases developed side businesses through the loan of players. The Premier League club Chelsea, for example, has nearly 40 players out on loan.
Some of the FIFA report’s most critical findings were related to the role of player agents, which it described as the central figures in a “plague” of conflicts of interest. In 2017, almost $500 million was paid in fees to agents, a 105 percent increase from 2013. The focus on financial rewards has “allowed a small group of agents to wield influence on players and clubs,” FIFA’s task force said.
Figures like the Portuguese superagent Jorge Mendes, and Mino Raiola, who pocketed more than $50 million after brokering Paul Pogba’s transfer to Manchester United, have become as well known as the players they represent. But at the lower end of the market, there has been a churn of players, too, as some brokers create deals with the sole aim of scoring a commission.
“The current framework promotes financial incentives to prevail over the interest and welfare of vulnerable parties such as players, particularly minors,” the FIFA panel said.
FIFA’s proposals to tame agent behavior include a new global registration system that it would administer; an annual exam similar to one financial advisers are required to take; and a fixed cap on commissions.
