Russian football has attracted a lot of “bad people” since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but they are being left in the past as the country becomes a major player on the world footballing stage, leading Dutch agent Jan van Baal told RIA Novosti on Thursday.
Van Baal, who represents players including Manchester City striker Roque Santa Cruz, was in Moscow to hold a seminar for the European Football Agents Associations, a continental trade body for football’s middlemen.
“You see a lot of times in Europe when it’s a new market and a lot of money’s involved it attracts a lot of bad people,” van Baal said, when asked how the Russian market had developed.
Some aspects of Russian transfer dealings resemble episodes from European football’s past, he suggested.
“A couple of the examples we heard today were the same examples we heard ten, 15 years ago in Holland,” he said, adding: “I don’t think it’s better or less than what we do in Europe.”
Despite an uncertain start, Russian football will be a “big player in the future” and is being developed by a new breed of agents who behave professionally, van Baal suggested.
“There’s also a lot of serious people and they will make the future.”
The EFAA was founded in 2007 by the national agents’ associations for Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Italy, England, France and Germany and now claims to include more than 1,500 agents from 17 countries, including associate member nations.
