An agent is paid to move you, not to keep you happy

Commission structures reward transactions rather than careers, and that single fact shapes squad lists across every league.

Follow the money one step and a lot of confusing career moves stop being confusing. An agent typically earns on the event: a percentage of the transfer fee, a percentage of the new contract, sometimes a signing bonus share. Nothing pays for the year a player spends developing quietly at a club that suits him.

That is not an accusation of bad faith. It is a description of an incentive. Any professional paid per transaction will, on the margin, see more reasons for transactions than a professional paid a retainer. Lawyers and estate agents work under the same distortion and nobody pretends otherwise.

The complications multiply in football, where the same agency can hold relationships with a player, a selling club and a buying club at once. Regulators have tried to cap commissions and force disclosure of dual representation. Enforcement is patchy, jurisdictions vary, and money can be routed through consultancy invoices that look nothing like a transfer commission. A fee cap is only as good as the auditing behind it, and auditing football finance across borders is not something governing bodies are equipped to do well.

For a young player the practical effect is a career shaped by liquidity. Moves happen when a window is open and a fee can be structured, not when the player is ready. A loan that suits development but generates no commission is a harder conversation than a permanent move that generates one, and the person having that conversation with the family is the person who gets paid.

I would like to see more agencies paid a flat annual retainer with a small performance element, which a few of the better ones already offer to established clients. It aligns almost everything. It also earns far less in a hot market, which is why it stays rare.

The one reform worth having is boring and administrative. Publish every intermediary payment, per deal, per club, in the same statement clubs already file. Sunlight will not fix the incentive, but it lets journalists and supporters see which advisers are farming the same squad year after year.

Careers are assets. Somebody is always taking a fee to churn them.