Mais detalhes sobre a transferência de Ronaldo para Manchester, o perigo do “autocarros de comissões”, a lado negre de “SuperAgents” e a incompetência que reina no Sporting (e ainda há pessoal que defende, o homem de comissões, carlos freitas);
[b]The brightest star in Europe and £1m to a mysterious agent[/b]
[i]• Second of a three-part series by David Conn[/i] - [url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/david-conn-inside-sport-blog/2011/jan/18/jorge-mendes-super-agent] Part one aqui[/url]
• The deal that delivered Ronaldo to Old Trafford
Manchester United’s signing of a callow, improbably talented Cristiano Ronaldo in August 2003 was a defining moment for the Premier League and modern football itself, heralding a dazzling new superstar for a fledgling millennium.
For the 18-year-old’s agent, former nightclub owner and semi-professional footballer Jorge Mendes – who is being sued by the English agency Formation for half the fees he earned on that and other deals – Ronaldo’s arrival marked his entry into football’s big time. Ronaldo’s brilliant Old Trafford career and the astounding £81m United received when Real Madrid signed him six years later, meant relatively few questions have been asked about the circumstances surrounding the player’s arrival at United.
There have, however, been some: about which agents actually worked on the deal and how much they were paid; about how close Ronaldo came to signing for Arsenal; and why United paid £12.24m when it was rumoured Sporting Lisbon had been discussing a fee of €6m with other English clubs, including the north Londoners. Formation’s court case against Mendes’s company, Gestifute, with piles of the original documents filed in the Porto district court, reveals more details about the deal. The revelations fill some of the gaps, but also beg some further questions.
According to Formation’s claim, and Tony Henry, Formation’s then principal agent working with Gestifute, Mendes told them at the time that he had received €400,000 from United for the Ronaldo deal. Then United reported in their 2004 accounts that they had paid £1.129m to agents in the transfer.
In defence documents seen by the Guardian, Mendes has said United did not pay him at all and that his fee was paid by an Italian agent, Giovanni Branchini. The Football Association, through which clubs must pay all agents’ fees, is understood to have stated, following court orders that it discloses the detail, that United did indeed pay “another agent” – not Mendes – £1m.
Why United more than doubled the fee being discussed to sign Ronaldo, and what role Branchini performed to merit being paid when Mendes was Ronaldo’s agent, and why the Italian then apparently paid Mendes are questions that remain unanswered. Branchini and Mendes did not answer the Guardian’s queries about these details of the deal.
Ronaldo’s transfer figured among the 99 very public questions United’s former major shareholders, John Magnier and JP McManus, asked of the club during their dispute with Sir Alex Ferguson over the stud rights for Rock of Gibraltar, the racehorse they had given him.
“Did [Manchester United] pay any commission to agents in relation to the transfer of Mr Ronaldo from Sporting Lisbon?” the Irishmen asked.
"If commissions were paid, please identify the agent engaged on behalf of [United]. Please identify the agent engaged on behalf of the player.
“Please explain the reason for the amount of the commission and the process of calculation of that figure. Was the commission paid on behalf of both [United] and the player?”
United never confirmed which agents acted on the deal, nor who they acted for, nor how the payment of £1.129m was arrived at. In fact the club never produced public answers to any of the Irish investors’ 99 questions about the club’s transfer dealings.
United did announce subsequently that Jason Ferguson, Sir Alex’s son, would no longer be involved in transfers at the club – he had acted on some, although not Ronaldo’s – and Panorama’s “Fergie and Son” documentary, detailing Jason’s involvement in United deals, is the reason Ferguson Sr no longer speaks to the BBC.
United’s board also then agreed to publish how much they paid agents on individual player deals each year, and disclosed the £1.129m in Ronaldo’s case. That was a landmark commitment to transparency, which the Glazer family scrapped shortly after they bought United in 2005.
Formation’s claim against Mendes’s Gestifute agency, pursued via the court in Porto, and seen by the Guardian, alleges that Mendes reneged on a two-year agreement the two companies had signed in May 2003, to work in partnership and share fees when Mendes’s Portuguese stars were signed by Premier League clubs. Formation, run at the time by Paul Stretford, Wayne Rooney’s agent, says in the court document that the firm began to promote the then 17-year-old Ronaldo to English clubs from October 2002, after Mendes and Sporting Lisbon’s sporting director, Carlos Freitas, said they wanted to sell him.
The court claim states Formation first suggested Ronaldo to Gérard Houllier, then Liverpool’s manager. Then on 21 November 2002 Tony Henry, the main Formation agent working with Gestifute, and Mendes met at Arsenal to pitch the merits of various Gestifute players. Arsène Wenger was very interested in Ronaldo, as the Arsenal manager lamented in an interview three years ago. In fact, the document states Ronaldo visited Arsenal’s London Colney training ground to meet Wenger and the coaching staff three days later, on 24 November 2002.
The claim states that Formation met Wenger again in January 2003, followed by David Dein, then Arsenal’s vice-chairman, in February, and continued to discuss a move through the subsequent months, including at a meeting in June 2003 at the Hotel Concorde La Fayette in Paris. As late as 1 August 2003, the claim states that Henry was meeting Mendes in Porto to discuss Ronaldo’s prospective move to Arsenal, which Henry, now chief scout at Everton, says was indeed priced at €6m.
Just five days later United arrived in Lisbon to play the now-legendary friendly with Sporting to open their Jose Alvalade Stadium, in which the 18-year-old Ronaldo bewitched United’s defence with the full palette of his skills.
Ferguson always said his senior players begged him on the plane home to sign Ronaldo – although one United source said they had been intending to sign him before that game and allow him to continue on loan at Sporting – and within four days he was a United player for a fee of £12.24m.
Formation claims it was kept out of the negotiations with United, in breach of its 50-50 partnership agreement with Gestifute.
The day after Mendes tied up the signing of the football prodigy, Formation claims he met with Stretford at the Mottram Hall Hotel in Cheshire and told the agent he had received €400,000 as his fee for the deal. The court claim alleges that Mendes did not pay Formation 50% of that, as it had equally shared the fees on previous deals, but instead offered £80,000.
The agency says it accepted that figure, substantially less than it was entitled to, to preserve the relationship with Mendes, who had signed up most of the Portuguese internationals playing their way to prominence.
The companies later held discussions about Ronaldo’s commercial deals, and Henry, who says he spent “85% of my time working with Jorge,” continued to pitch the potential of Mendes’s players to Premier League clubs. The relationship between the two agencies broke down terminally after the arrival of Jose Mourinho at Chelsea and the signing of several Portuguese players through Mendes, for which Formation received no fees.
In the court action Formation has included a claim that Mendes “concealed” the full amount of the fee he was paid by United in order to pay Formation off with a lower figure – £80,000 – rather than half the £1.129m which United paid. Formation acknowledged, however, that other agents may have been involved in the deal, saying the true amount Mendes received would have to be determined from his company’s accounts.
Formation’s Portuguese lawyers obtained from the Porto court an order in this country that obliged the FA to reveal how much Mendes was paid by United when Ronaldo signed. The answer was €150,000 – a figure even lower than the €400,000 Mendes declared to Formation. In a defence document filed with the court more recently Mendes’s company said it did not receive any commission at all from United, but was paid for its work in the deal by Branchini. He is a Fifa-registered agent, well known in his native Italy, who more recently appeared in this country as an associate of Fabio Capello, although not his agent, when he arrived to coach England.
Formation sought clarification from the FA, which arrived via a letter to the high court late last year, and prompted only further questions. The governing body is understood to have confirmed that, according to its records, United paid the full £1.129m through the FA as a “clearing house” as English clubs are required to do. However, the governing body said only €150,000 was then paid to Gestifute, and that the rest, £1m, was indeed paid to another agent.
United themselves have never said which agents were involved in the Ronaldo transfer, and it is unclear what Branchini did for the money he received in the deal.
Sporting Lisbon had made it known to both Mendes and Formation that they wanted to cash in on Ronaldo; Henry had actively promoted him to Premier League clubs and Arsenal were interested in signing him. United were even understood to have a “partnership” agreement with Sporting that they would have first refusal on the Portuguese club’s players (only last week it was reported that Manchester City have replaced United in this arrangement).
Ronaldo played wondrously in the friendly with Sporting, Ferguson wanted him, and United moved immediately, so why would Branchini need to be paid by Manchester United? And if Mendes was – and still is – Ronaldo’s own agent, why did Branchini then pay him more money directly, as Mendes has alleged?
Asked by the Guardian about these revelations and questions, United declined to explain. A spokesman said: “We have no comment to make. The deal was agreed, the correct payments made and we were delighted to secure Ronaldo who, with his hard work and our coaching, turned into the world’s best player.”
A spokesperson for Gestifute declined to comment on the specifics of the case but reiterated they were “very confident that the court will decide in our favour”.
Formation declined to comment pending resolution of its legal action against Gestifute. Ronaldo did indeed develop into a global football icon at United and he, Manchester United and Mendes all made a great deal of money when the star was signed by Real Madrid for that staggering £81m in 2009.
Mendes is reported to have been paid a neat €8m then, although he has never confirmed it. Neither has he, United nor Real declared whether any other agents were paid, how much, for what work, or what they did with the money.
Although the fortunes involved have steepled higher, transfer deals are even less transparent now than they were in 2003-04, when the prince of stepovers arrived from Portugal, lighting up the game – but not the way its greatest clubs, or his agent, handle their money.
