Fifa urged to tighten rules on money super-agents make from transfers

Fifa should tighten its proposed rules on intermediaries to limit the money made by super-agents, the influential Council of Europe will be told on Wednesday.

A cap on the amount agents can make in any transaction and on the service fees they can charge are among the ideas to be put forward, alongside the creation of a solidarity system that would see money filter from the biggest clubs in Europe to smaller leagues and teams.

The recommendations form part of a report by the council’s committee on culture, science, education and media into football governance which, if adopted, would see the council broadly endorse the new rules while setting absolute limits on the money an agent can make on any deal. Fifa is trying to implement its reforms in the face of stern opposition from top agents.

Lord Foulkes, who sits on the committee, will make the proposals on Wednesday, with Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, in attendance at a session of the council’s parliamentary assembly. Foulkes is set to be highly critical of the current system. A draft version of the report to be put in front of the assembly said that the transfer market, despite its “fundamental importance” to the football industry, had created a mechanism where “huge sums circulate among the elite clubs in a solipsistic economy of limited circulation of resources”.

In his report, Foulkes says that the need for agents to have “fair and reasonable” earnings must be matched against “avoiding conflicts of interest, protecting the players, avoiding pressure towards contractual instability and preventing abusive, excessive and speculative practices”.

Therefore, he writes: “I believe we must insist in asking that all commissions and fees paid to agents are capped,