An agent who says “100% transparent”. That’s historic. I’m weighing my words. I read it on Walfoot, by the foosball table at the café, and I put down my paper cone of chips.
The agent is Stijn Francis, a former Westerlo and Leuven player. His agency, Stirr Associates, handled the transfers of Kostas Karetsas, Nathan De Cat, Loïs Openda and Jarne Steuckers last summer. Four deals, and not one of them landed in my WhatsApp group as an “imminent deal” three weeks beforehand. That’s historic too.
In his interview with Le Grand Rectangle, he says the only way to settle the conflict between commissions and the player’s interest is to be 100% transparent and leave the decision to the player. He also describes losing a client: “We lost a client who told us: you’re not corrupt enough, you can’t get me into one of those twenty clubs. Good clients ask us for control, bad ones say: you have to put me in such-and-such club”.
That’s a disgrace. I’m weighing my words here too. Not about him, mind. About a trade that makes someone want to say that sentence.
He says that at the start, his agency was blocked at some clubs because the big agents were against it. He just wanted, in his words, “to do nothing behind their backs”. And he adds: “And it was a success”. We lacked a bit of luck at the start, but there are positives.
He also mentions Zinho Vanheusden, who had an English club, an Italian club and Standard Liège, the latter paying far less. I read that sentence out to the group. My brother-in-law replied with a thumbs up. He never sends a thumbs up.
“I’ve been leaving the decision to the player for years. When there are eleven of them asking me, that is.”
I’ve changed the group description to “transparency, 100%”. Twelve members, zero commission. Now we take it one game at a time, you know.
It’s true, we checked: Walfoot.
