Only recently had Uli Hoeneß im CHECK24 double pass on SPORT1 The honorary president of FC Bayern called his player advisor Pini Zahavi “a greedy piranha” in connection with the transfer poker around David Alaba.
The job profile of the agent does not necessarily have the most serious reputation in professional football, as Mino Raiola is currently documenting as a weighty scene player, who with statements and suggestions about a change of his client and BVB star striker Erling-Braut Haaland again and again Borussia Dortmund scares you (SPORT1-Interview: Raiola-Wirbel leaves Watzke cold)
Due to the record change of Julian Nagelsmann, who as Bundesliga coach is now going from RB Leipzig to FC Bayern for 25 million euros, the type of player adviser is currently enormously in focus.
Volker Struth was responsible for the Nagelsmann transfer. The player advisor and manager of the agency Sports360, who also looks after national players Toni Kroos and Dayot Upamecano, defended himself in the CHECK24 double pass on SPORT1 now against the negative image of his guild.
Especially when it comes to transfer fees, Struth cannot be held responsible for being the driving force. “It is a fairy tale that we consultants are responsible for it,” said the Cologne native. “That this figure seems high is due to the fact that it is new. I am not responsible for the transfer fees.”
Struth explains Nagelsmann deal
Struth sees himself primarily as an intermediary moderator of interests between two existing or future contract partners – this is also supposed to have been the case in the case of Bavaria, Leipzig and Nagelsmann, whose contract with the Saxons was actually dated until 2023.
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“The word breach of contract sounds like a criminal offense,” replies Struth. “But neither I nor Julian Nagelsmann or my partner Sascha Breese, who is even more closely connected to Julian, ran in with a Kalashnikov and said: ‘It’s time to go!’ He (Nagelsmann, Anm. d. Red.) made a request and negotiations started after that. “
What is important for the player’s agent to emphasize in this context: “If a coach is released early when things don’t go well, that would also be a breach of contract, but you don’t talk about it. I see it very differently, for me it’s not a breach of contract. “
Struth continues: “It has become a lot of politics. The coach had no release clause. It was always his dream to go to this club. He wanted to do it. The only thing Leipzig could do then was the highest possible transfer fee to generate.” (Bundesliga: The table)
Consultant fees justified? “Have to judge others”
Struth is nevertheless clear that his business stirs up a lot of dust – the accusation that comes up, not least of all in excess of money, does not bother him too much. “There are people who don’t approve of what I do. But I know what I’m doing.” (Bundesliga: All games and results)
He likes to answer a statement to the allegations regarding the income in his branch as follows: “Whether that is a lot of what we earn as consultants has to be judged by others. I also understand that one is talking about proportionality. There is a lot of money, and that is sometimes difficult to convey to people. “
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Struth still considers the current novelty of transfer fees for coaches to be unalterable: “That will repeat itself. We are entering a new era. And of course a top coach who is bought out of his contract will not necessarily sell his club for five million A club will now say: If Bayern have spent so much on Nagelmann, why shouldn’t you pay me 15 million for my coach? “
But that this development is now taking its course from Germany, “I would not have thought and imagined it would be in the Premier League,” said Struth.
Football is “too badly demolished”
Be that as it may: The ongoing debate about morals in connection with his profession is apparently getting on Struth’s nerves with increasing duration: “Football is being demolished too much for me in these times. We should ask ourselves the question: What does it give us Football? It is also an economic factor, it creates jobs. Billions of taxpayers’ money are paid there. “
The player’s agent also noted a primarily “German problem” – and gave this example: “Nowhere was there more discussion about the transfer of Neymar than here with us.”
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