NICHE to PRO Sports management

07/14/2026

We keep getting the same question from parents and guardians:
"How early can we get our child represented by a football agent?"

My answer is usually the same: probably later than you think.
An agent does not develop a player. An agent cannot create talent, discipline, or years of consistent hard work. Those things come from the player, the family, the coaches, the football academy or grassroot clubs.

Representation becomes valuable when there is a genuine football decision to make—such as negotiating a professional contract, evaluating offers from clubs, or protecting the player's interests. Before then, having an agent often changes very little.
If someone is telling you that your young child needs an agent immediately, ask one simple question:
"What specific decision requires an agent right now?"
In most cases, there isn't one.
Focus first on the player's development, education, character, and love for the game. When the time is right and real opportunities arise, the need for professional representation will become clear.

09/30/2025

⚠️ Bridge Transfers in Football: A Hidden Threat to Grassroots Development

As someone who continuously advocates for grassroots players and clubs, it’s heartbreaking to read some of these stories of injustice. I recently came across the cases of Mikayil Faye and Baye Coulibaly, both involved in what are known as bridge transfers.

🔍 What Is a Bridge Transfer ⁉️

A bridge transfer occurs when a player is temporarily registered with an intermediary club—often for a very short period—before being transferred to their actual destination club. These transfers are typically not made for sporting reasons, but rather to circumvent FIFA regulations, especially those concerning training compensation and solidarity payments.

🔴 In Faye’s case, he disappeared from Diambars FC in Senegal and reappeared months later in Croatia, briefly playing for third-division club NK Kustošija before being transferred to Barcelona. Despite training him for years, Diambars received no compensation, while Kustošija and intermediaries profited 😢

🔴 In Coulibaly’s case, his former club reportedly received only €50,000 from a €1.95 million transfer fee. The majority of the profit went to the bridge club and agents 😢

📜 FIFA’s Ban on Bridge Transfers

In March 2020, FIFA introduced Article 5bis in its Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP).

This article presumes a bridge transfer has occurred if a player is transferred twice within 16 weeks, unless the clubs can prove the moves were made for genuine sporting reasons.

⚖️ Case Study: Paris FC & Angers SCO

In this case, the player signed his first professional contract with Paris FC on 1 July 2020, was registered on 6 July, and transferred to Angers SCO just six weeks later, on 18 August 2020.

FIFA concluded the move was not for sporting purposes, but to circumvent training compensation rules.

FIFA’s Disciplinary Committee sanctioned both clubs with:

💸 A CHF 30,000 fine

⛔ A transfer ban at national and international level for one registration period

This was the first time FIFA imposed sanctions for a bridge transfer violation since Article 5bis came into force.

🌍 Why This Matters

Bridge transfers disproportionately affect grassroots and African academies, who invest years in developing young talent only to be left uncompensated.

📣 Call to Action

As agents, clubs, and federations, we must uphold the principles of fair play and transparency.

To protect football development at the grassroots level, we must:

✅ Educate academies on FIFA’s Article 5bis and their rights

✅ Monitor transfers involving academy players more closely

✅ Report suspicious patterns to FIFA or national federations

Let’s protect the future of football by ensuring ethical and lawful transfer practices.

sports management
management Education

11/27/2023

SCOUTING, Observing and selecting a football player is just a part of the job of scouting. It’s absolutely important to know how to write a detailed and intuitive report. We are going to analyze how and what to observe in Scouting, of course to become good Observers you need to be able to tell stories, and what we will have seen will assume a decisive importance in the concluding part of the negotiation which must be anticipatory towards the competing companies. If we could tell what we have seen and evaluated with our own eyes, conveying our feelings to the Sports Director or the Scouting Manager, we would have done a great job. The Relationship must be understandable and must be able to facilitate the task of the Scouting Manager or the Sports Director by enabling the two reference figures to understand as clearly as possible the type of player we are talking about, so that when the Manager He will read the report of a scout, he will feel like he watched the football player himself.

THE AREAS OF OBSERVATION

Which and how many are the observation areas? There are basically four: physics, technique, tactics and character. The advice is to follow this order, without changing its criteria. Obviously, if you analyze a young person in the youth sector, the technical area becomes more important and needs a more accurate description than the others. Starting from the first area, that of physics, we have to know which "voices" are part of it and then, even if in summary, we have to provide an explanation for each of them.

PHYSICAL AREA

In addition to height and weight, the physical type has to be defined: whether longiline, normaliline or breviline. In this regard, without going into medical - scientific specifications, for simplicity and to determine which of the three types the footballer belongs to we use height parameters. Not knowing its weight, you can indicate whether it is slim or of a solid - compact build. To make an example, we could start the relationship like this: "Attacker (or defender or midfielder), slim longline (or longline of massive-compact body), of particular height (if we observe that you exceed at least ninety meters).

The main names of the physical area to describe are:

Agility
Coordination
Force
Resistance
Velocity
Elevation (explosiveness).
It’s not enough to limit yourself to giving votes or simple values like insufficient, sufficient, good, excellent, but for each of them a judgment and the reason for your opinion must be expressed.

10/20/2023

10/02/2023

09/20/2023

https://fb.watch/nbetKz8n1N/?mibextid=j8LeHn