What role do agencies have to play in GBE & ESC player moves?
There is always lots of talk of recruitment teams, clubs, and players, but what of the agents, and how can they help in the GBE/ESC world?
Agents are exceptionally important in making the transfer market what it is. They provide the conduit through which business is done, and whilst, some people may wish it wasn’t so, agents provide a valuable service for both clubs and players alike.
The issue when applying agents, and agencies in general, into the GBE and ESC landscape is that, obviously, these rules are specific only to deals coming into the UK. So there is not necessarily any specialism amongst global agents and agencies as to bringing players into the UK, so why should intermediaries be fully across UK immigration law?
This is not to suggest that agents don’t have a firm grasp of the GBE rules, but because there are changes and adaptations to the rules every year, and so many player statuses change throughout the years, it can be hard to keep track of which of the players in an agency stable are eligible at any one time, and what can be done to make players eligible for a work permit in the UK.
The UK Market
It is, however, well-known in football recruitment that England, and, in particular, the Premier League is a market which players, managers, staff, and, therefore, agents want to be a part of.
The amount of money spent in the Premier League on fees, which often correlates with wage spend, has been driven to a regular 3B per season. The non-domestic market usually accounts for over half of the fees spent and players brought in, though last season we saw a much higher percentage of money spent domestically than usual.
The route to getting to the Premier League is never linear though, and therefore, moves to the EFL Championship, itself the 7th biggest spender in transfer fees last season, or even the EFL League One and League Two are potentially important in terms of non-domestic players coming into those leagues.
The general media and the global audience are, naturally, focused on the Premier League, and the money is clearly there for all to see. However, the Premier League is still connected to the EFL, and the importance of those three football leagues cannot be overstated. The issue in terms of GBE and ESC with agents who have clients who should be targeting those leagues is that level of knowledge of whether or not players do qualify for a work permit at that level.
We have seen massive changes in the number of non-domestic transfers coming into the Championship in recent seasons, and it was the same in League One last season as well.
But, the quality of player isn’t as high in these leagues, and therefore the calculations of GBE points and then ESC eligibility isn’t always as easy to determine for anyone, and, especially, the player’s representatives.
Potential solutions
I had an intermediary come to me at a recent event to tell me a story about a client of theirs who had been playing for a major German club, and was sent to England for trials with a big club, but not a Premier League club.
The English club loved the player, wanted to take him, and work began on the deal. A few weeks later the club informed the agent that they couldn’t take him because he wouldn’t get a work permit.
The agent was astounded by this news. He tried to take his case to the FA, but, it was clear that the player’s circumstances were indeed outside of the nuances of the Points Based System of The FA.
It was an interesting story, as it illuminated a number of potential issues. Should this have been caught earlier? If so, then by whom? The club? The agent?
The GBE Expert Hub have a service that can help anyone, clubs, club owners, execs, or agents/agencies, even players themselves to avoid this issue.
By using a player status report, as one agency did last week to provide evidence of a player’s eligibility to an EFL club, the evidence is provided in an easy-to-read but professional format which allows everyone potentially involved in a deal to understand the lay of the land in terms of a player’s eligibility to make a move.
This includes an executive summary of the points, and then evidence of why and how they do or don’t hit the criteria.
This service is available to anyone simply by clicking the link or scanning the QR code below.
https://buy.stripe.com/fZu3cvcrN9pd2WYbdx7EQ01
The GBE Agency Audit Snapshot
In many cases the agent won’t necessarily be at the point of requiring a full individual player report, and perhaps would like to see a snapshot of where their stable of players are currently at in terms of GBE status.
The image above is a completely made up snapshot of a potential agency stable of players.
This is solely to illustrate how something like this may look.
This service is available in batches of 10 players, so if you want to look at 10 players then you can buy one audit. If you want to look at 50 players then buying five of this product would cover all of those players.
This would be a great tool to use in a first case as it gives you the info on your stable and then allows you to target players that are eligible for England to specific teams in complete confidence that your client is eligible, and avoids the situation that I described above.
The link to this product is below:
https://buy.stripe.com/dRmfZhgI3eJx9lma9t7EQ02
There are variations on these for clubs of course. It can be especially useful for foreign clubs who would like to know which of their players are possibly marketable to the UK market.
If there is anyone that you know who could benefit from a service such as this, then please forward them this piece, or just ask them to message Andy Watson (https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-watson-gbe/) or message directly through the site.