Newly promoted Wolverhampton Wanderers spent over €72m on new signings during the Summer transfer window but there was something familiar about the business they did and how they did it.
Over the last two years Wolves have spent something in the region of €65m on players either of Portuguese nationality, or represented by the super agent Jorge Mendes. The list of arrivals over the last two years also includes the Wolves Manager Nuno Espirito Santo, who was Mendes first client as a football agent. The influx of Portuguese signings and the involvement of Mendes has come about since the club from the Black Country was bought by Fosun International, the Chinese investors conglomerate; with Mendes reportedly helping to identify Wolves as a prospect to buy, and there being a business partnership between Mendes and Fosun. Another link between the two is a company called Shanghai Foyo, which is majority owned by Fosun’s chairman, Guo Guanchang, which bought stakes in “Start”, the holding company for Mendes’ Gestifute agency. Mendes’ Gestifute agency represented the Midlands club via a Portuguese agent (Valdir Cardosa) in the deal with Monaco for Ivan Cavaleiro in 2017, where Cavaleiro was represented by Carlos Osorio de Castro. The same Carlos Osorio de Castro then represented Helder Costa in his move from Monaco to Molineux, with Cardosa representing Wolves. No issue here until you see that Osorio de Castro is believed to have acted as Gestifute’s lawyer for many years1.
Exchange the names of Mendes, de Castro and Cardosa and the company Gestifute with Jerome Anderson, SEM, Kentaro and Crescendo and it all sounds a bit too familiar to Blackburn Rovers fans. Cold sweats will likely follow as many Rovers fans hold these people fully responsible for the turmoil the club has been through over the last 7 years.
Since Fosun International bought Wolves back in July 2016 for £45m, they have bought no fewer than nine players represented by either Mendes or his Gestifute agency, for over a staggering €50m, with a significant amount spent during the 2016-17 and 17-18 seasons in the Championship. In simple terms, Mendes helped Fosun International identify Wolves as a suitable club to purchase, and since said purchase he has entered in to a business partnership with Fosun, and since then, over €50m-worth of players represented by his management agency have been bought by Wolves. He does not own the players, he merely represents them, but the sheer volume of his clients bought by Wolves, and his involvement with the club does seem somewhat unethical, and if not unethical, definitely unhealthy. The first place Wolves will go when looking for a new signing will be Mendes – if he doesn’t have a financial stake in the club, something where decisions on player transfers affecting performance and results could affect profit and loss to him – it is a very risky and trusting venture from Fosun International. One has to expect that the “business partnership” between Mendes and Fosun is dependant on the provision of the quality of the players, not the quantity of players.
Step back in time to November 2010 when Venkys bought a 99.9% stake in Blackburn Rovers for £23m. Venkys employed sports rights agency Kentaro, who had a corporate partnership with Jerome Anderson’s SEM Group, in very much the same way that Fosun International engaged with Mendes: to find a suitable a club to buy; and following the purchase, to assist with transfer strategy for Rovers with their in-house agents who deal with talent management. The similarities, at least for now, end there. Instead of signing established household names like Moutinho or Patricio, or signing promising youngsters like Wolves have done, Blackburn embarked on 2 years of promising global superstars but delivering unknown youngsters or family relations. After spending a rumoured £1.6m in agents fees for Barcelona’s Reuben Rochina in their first transfer window in charge (when Anderson allegedly had no say in transfer dealings, but was rumoured to have slept at the training ground), in the summer of 2012 Rovers bought no less than six Portuguese players for a around £100k, yet paid £864k in agents fees to Nuno Rolo, Carlos Mendes and Marcos Oliveira. On top of that, in the period between Venkys purchase of the club in 2010 and the of summer 2012, Sam Allardyce had been sacked and replaced by relatively unknown coach and Jerome Anderson represented Steve Kean, followed by Jerome Anderson represented assistant manager John Jensen, and perhaps most worryingly, Anderson was joined by his son Myles in 2011. A 21 year old with one appearance to his name for Aberdeen, with no Premier League experience, signing via a pre-contract agreement, for a well-established Premier League club where his father was not involved in the day to day running of the club but had a business relationship with the clubs owners; despite having previously failed to impress during a trial the previous summer, the summer before Venkys bought the club assisted by Anderson. Nepotism? Absolutely. Unethical? Most definitely. Rule breaking? The FA obviously thought something was going on as they investigated between 2011-2013. If I was a Wolves fan I’d be looking at Jorge Mendes’ family tree to see if he might try and pull a similar stunt (I’ve checked, he has a son called Jorge Mendes Junior, but there are no hints at his footballing ability).
Back in April 2013 it was reported that the FAs Head of Integrity had been investigating Rovers for more than two years, looking at the takeover of the club as well as control of the club and the involvement of agents and advisers2. Rovers response was that there was no contractual or customary arrangements, whether formal or informal, with SEM Ltd and/or Kentaro and/or any other company in the Kentaro AG Group; they did however confirm that Venkys did have an agreement with Kentaro under which they provided consultancy services to Venkys in respect of football related business. In the end nothing came of this as Anderson maintained he had no involvement in the running of the club, but there’s no smoke without fire, and if the FA looked in to Anderson’s involvement in Rovers, if the rules haven’t changed, they must be keeping an eye on the goings on at Wolves – if anything they are far more blatant with their activity. On the topic of Anderson and the FA investigation, as a side note it is worth remembering that Anderson was cosy with David Dein during his time as the as the Vice President between 2000-04 and Anderson himself was licensed as an FA intermediary; likewise, Kentaro had dealings with the FA in 2009 as part of selling the broadcast rights to an England World Cup Qualifier with Ukraine.
The link between Mendes and the players signed by Wolves is clear and obvious, but the link between Rovers and the players signed in the summer of 2012 is not. The only visible links are the use of the same agents to broker the deals, the payments received by the agents for the deals, and strangely the signing of Nuno Henrique. At the time Rovers bought Henrique, I, like most Rovers fans, assumed Henrique to be another youngster from Portugal that Rovers were hoping would blossom in to a star – he wasn’t. He was a 25 year old defender plying his trade at Portuguese Primeira Liga side Academica; by plying his trade, he had made just 2 appearances for Academica that season, and 7 the season before that for Feirense, other than that the majority of his football had been played in the Portuguese Segunda for Aves and Fafe. On paper he doesn’t scream “suitable for a promotion push”, and on the field he obviously didn’t either as he never made a first team appearance for Rovers. He was a strange signing – the only connection I can find between him and Rovers is that Steve Kean, manager at the time, played for Academica between 1988-1991. However, Henrique was represented by the agent Marcos Oliveira, who also represented Edinho Junior, Diogo Rosado and Grego Sandomierski who were also brought in that summer (with hefty agents fees paid) – so maybe I’m trying to read too much in to this, and it is merely a case of him being recommended by an agent already being used for multiple deals for hefty fees. Of the players brought in that summer in 2012, they made a combined total of 30 appearances for the club, with veteran Nuno Gomes being responsible for more than half of those on his own (18).
The situation at Wolves is very similar to the one at Ewood between 2010 and arguably the end of the Owen Coyle reign, and if I was a Wolves fan I’d be concerned over Mendes involvement in the club. It might be rosy now his signings have got them back to the Premier League and he looks to have brought in some good players, but at what cost? And what happens should they not do the job and relegation happens? What contracts are they on? Is Nuno Espirito Santo too comfortable given his relationship with Mendes given Mendes’ relationship with Fosun International? It’s only when things go wrong than you see the cracks appear and see what devastation lies behind them cracks – look at Blackburn Rovers: after being bought by the Venkys with alleged agent involvement, they stayed up that season (ironically thanks to a victory against Wolves on the last day of the season), were relegated the next and were then unable to get back to the top flight before being related to League One in 2017 – from Premier League security to League One in just 7 years, and riddled with debt just for good measure. Wolves have been to League One in recent years and Blackburn will be hoping to follow their steps back to the Premier League, so Wolves should be all too aware of the dangers of mismanagement. The FA also need to pay close attention – they did nothing to help Rovers when their fans asked for help and as a result the club was run in to the ground and almost in to administration; I’d hope if Wolves fans had a similar plight they would respond better. They also need to be clear on expectations on agents involvement at clubs – Mendes role is very murky water, but it is a role which oversees massive financial deals both for Wolves and his Clients. If he was to walk away tomorrow, Wolves then struggled and got relegated with his Clients on long term contracts for large wages, would the FA sit back and argue that Fosun International had been ‘fit and proper’ in their running of the club? Could Mendes be classed as a third party? If not, he must be classed as part of the club, in which case he is part of a process which agrees player wages (and other things) for both the club and the player, which doesn’t seem right.
References:
1https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/jun/19/jorge-mendes-wolves-influence-chinese-owners-signings
2http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2308641/Nick-Harris-FA-investigate-Blackburn-Rovers.html
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