We all understand that agents, and indeed all middle people, are leeches on the sport of football, grabbing their inflated percentages while skirting between the black and grey markets, bribing and threatening people and corrupting the game.
They force players to adhere to certain match data as basic sabermetrics measures the obvious, they enter into third party arrangements and other forms of disguised dual ownership of players to confuse both the footballing authorities and the tax regime, they control aspects of the media sometimes psychopathically so, and many persuade players to underperform so that insider gambles may be achieved on what the fan thinks is an authentic football match.
Nothing to see there then...
The structure is identical to the current spot fixing trial involving Pakistani cricketers - an agent strikes a deal with an underground bookmaker to create a fake reality and then bribes or coerces his player to act accordingly.
But there are two key differences.
Firstly, it is facile to target cricketers from the sub-continent. What about the Australian, English and South African players who undertake the same murkiness?
And, secondly, there is a slight difference between bowling three no-balls and altering the outcome of an allegedly competitive sporting event.
But every time a professional footballer plays poorly so that money may be illicitly made in the betting markets in the immediate term, their strategic value plummets.
Although this is offset by the potential of post-retirement disinformational media work, would a player really prefer to go down in history as a Bobby Charlton or a Robbie ######?
In the past we have frequently blogged about John Colquhoun of Key Sports Management.
This leading agent is not only utterly honest but additionally he is superbly talented as a look at the current season demonstrates.
Taking the achievements from the top...
Closely linked with Scotland manager Craig Levein, JC has been very vocal in person and through his contacts and ghost writing in his support of a manager who has utterly failed in the easiest of the Euro 2012 Qualifying Groups. Only defeating Liechtenstein in a home match in the 7th minute of injury time, playing 4-6-0 away to the Czechs in the game that ultimately destroyed any hopes of qualification, moaning on about refereeing decisions against the Scots while ignoring equally ridiculous decisions in the opposite direction and selecting players who do not have the best interests of the international team at heart.
Little wonder that the man has grown a beard to disguise himself...
Then there was persuading Liverpool to pay 20 million for a sub-standard reserve player, Jordan Henderson. If Henderson is worth 20 mill then Charlie Adam is worth fifty. And he's not. Liverpool owner John Henry already recognises that he has overpaid.
Then there is that talented runner Theo Walcott who is repeatedly eulogised in the sports pages of The Guardian, JC's prime media outlet. 16 million for a player who can't pass, can't shoot and is now behind both Gervinho and Oxlade-Chamberlain in the pecking order.
Then there is his role as club agent at West Brom. Having messed up with Roy Hodgson on the Liverpool post, the pair have taken WBA to the heights of third bottom in the Premier League.
Then there are the close links with Steve Bruce and Sunderland who currently lie fifth from bottom in ScudamoreWorld.
Or how about his protege Steve McClaren who having been sacked by Wolfsburg (and mocked by their fans), was denied the Villa job via a fan revolt before taking Nottingham Forest to 2nd bottom in the Championship before being sacked (or resigning depending on your version of reality).
The only team below Forest are Bristol City whose goalkeeper has a column ghost-written on his behalf by JC in The Guardian newspaper.
But probably worst has been the performance at Celtic where, despite both Dallasgate and Rangers being skint, he has helped to oversee a title loss, a ten point deficit already this season and a futile Europa Cup campaign that is both undeserved and distracting - FC Sion were robbed and better.
And, of course, there is the Secret Footballer ruse, where JC pretends to be a current international so that he might defend his failures in The Guardian paper - the Secret Footballer is a Secret Agent.
And it is The Guardian newspaper that is a the foundation of this nonsense - The Guardian, the paper for the acquiescent who would like to believe that they are alternative.
As John Pilger writes regarding this rag of a paper and Julian Assange: "Books have been published, movie deals struck and media careers launched or kick-started on the assumption that he is fair game and too poor to sue. People have made money, often big money, while WikiLeaks has struggled to survive. On 16 June, the publisher of Canongate Books, Jamie Byng, when asked by Assange for an assurance that the rumoured unauthorised publication of his autobiography was not true, said, “No, absolutely not. That is not the position … Julian, do not worry. My absolute number one desire is to publish a great book which you are happy with.” On 22 September, Canongate released what it called Assange’s “unauthorised autobiography” without the author’s permission or knowledge. It was a first draft of an incomplete, uncorrected manuscript. ““They thought I was going to prison and that would have inconvenienced them,” he told me. “It’s as if I am now a commodity that presents an incentive to any opportunist.”
The editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, has called the WikiLeaks disclosures “one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years”: indeed, this is part of his current marketing promotion to justify raising the Guardian’s cover price. But the scoop belongs to Assange not the Guardian. Compare the paper’s attitude towards Assange with its bold support for the reporter threatened with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act for revealing the iniquities of Hackgate. Editorials and front pages have carried stirring messages of solidarity from even Murdoch’s Sunday Times. On 29 September, Carl Bernstein was flown to London to compare all this with his Watergate triumph. Alas, the iconic fellow was not entirely on message. “It’s important not to be unfair to Murdoch,” he said, because “he’s the most far seeing media entrepreneur of our time” who “put The Simpsons on air” and thereby “showed he could understand the information consumer”.
The contrast with the treatment of a genuine pioneer of a revolution in journalism, who dared take on rampant America, providing truth about how great power works, is telling. A drip-feed of hostility runs through the Guardian, making it difficult for readers to interpret the WikiLeaks phenomenon and to assume other than the worst about its founder. David Leigh, the Guardian’s “investigations editor”, told journalism students at City University that Assange was a “Frankenstein monster” who “didn’t use to wash very often” and was “quite deranged”. When a puzzled student asked why he said that, Leigh replied, “Because he doesn’t understand the parameters of conventional journalism. He and his circle have a profound contempt for what they call the mainstream media”. According to Leigh, these “parameters” were exemplified by Bill Keller when, as editor of the New York Times, he co-published the WikiLeaks disclosures with the Guardian. Keller, said Leigh, was “a seriously thoughtful person in journalism” who had to deal with “some sort of dirty, flaky hacker from Melbourne”.
JC makes considerable money from his use of The Guardian to promote and, more usually, to defend his clients.
But what is in this for Rusbridger?
We tweeted to ask him but, quite reasonably, received no response.
Aside from the corruption and the ruination of the best game on earth, the strategy of JC and his ilk is short-termist in the extreme - a total neo-con money grab.
If JC were strategic, people in the game would work with him into the future whereas individuals like Wenger, Dalglish, Henry and Lawell are hardly likely to repeat the past failures again.
And, as an aside, corruption doesn't always pay.
In one Carling Cup match this season, some insiders had absolute control - the referee and the opposing goalkeeper were owned by the manipulators.
And yet they still messed it up and ended up losing their bets and the match.
There is only one thing worse than being corrupt...
...and that is being corrupt and stupid.
