Player agent Mike Wheeler of the MAE Agency continues Part 2 his four-part interview about third-party player ownership here, now focusing on MLS. Read Part 1 of this interview about player contracts and read Part 3 about training compensation.
LE: Why doesn’t MLS allow third party ownership?
Wheeler: I think MLS doesn’t allow third party because it’s extremely complicated and convoluted. Some might walk out if it got out that someone had x percentage of their own transfer rights and they profited from the sale of that.
LE: But if it’s done everywhere else around the world, why won’t they allow it?
Wheeler: They have the bargaining power, the MLS. Everything is centrally owned. If you got into a situation where all these teams were individually owned you might have an owner that really wants the player, but if he’s going to sign this player he’s going to have to negotiate with his management or a group of businessmen who’ve bought the player’s transfer rights or found some agreement with the talent – ‘We’ll get a great professional contract, we’ll make sure that they pay us for your transfer rights.’ It would be competition, but right now MLS wouldn’t do that, they’d be setting themselves up for bad business.
LE: Was the decision to not deal with third-party owners made to maintain a level playing field or is it the economies of scale by cutting out administrative deals?
Wheeler: One, it cuts down the cost – yes, administratively they reduce that, it’s more efficient. Whenever you have a third-party involved it just makes it more complicated.
But, third-party is not essentially a bad concept. Take the example of someone who takes a player and buys his rights and puts him in a better market - that’s something where it’s actually for the good of the player. Third-party ownership is not necessarily evil. There can be conflicts between the player’s best interests and the best interests of someone who bought the player’s transfer rights – that’s when it could be a negative for the player.
There have been third-party contracts with MLS players from outside of the US.
LE: Who are those players?
Wheeler: I don’t want to say, but MLS wouldn’t be able to get those players if they weren’t able to negotiate. What it is, is some of these players already have third-party ownership at their home club and what they do is they negotiate with MLS to take the player on as a loan. And then when they buy the rights of the player - where's that money is going? It might be going to x, but it’s definitely going to y and z.
It depends on how it works and how the situation arrives with the MLS. Basically, a good player, his rights are owned by his home team but can’t come to an agreement for buying him out on loan with option to buy. When they exercise the option to buy, that money will go to that home club that he’s registered with and that home club has an agreement with the third party and that’s how the money goes. There are two or three players I know in the League that had that type of situation.
LE: MLS Vice-President Player Personnel Lino DiCuollo said that third-parties ‘... can actually decide when, where, and how [the player is] playing.’ What does that mean?
Wheeler: ‘How’ he’s playing is whether or not he wants to change his play at certain clubs. Whether to force the club either to let him go and go back to his home country, and that way maybe someone can help the player. But certainly third-party conflicts arise with the classic example [Carlos] Tevez and Kia Joorabchian where Tevez certainly has rights held by Joorabchian. There are other offers and he can tell Tevez there’s something he cares about at Man City, ‘We’ll get you out of here, just don’t try to force their hand.’ Either the player can walk free at the end of the season or he has to sell him now and get something for him, at least in the winter transfer window.
LE: So do the players just play poorly or not get off the bench, or how does that work?
Wheeler: They can offer a written request to the president – ‘I’m unhappy here at the club for family reasons or just homesick, etc. I want a transfer.’ And they put in a transfer request. You’re dealing with talent and if talent is unhappy then they’re not going to be producing and it’s probably in your best interest to discontinue them when the contract is going to expire and run its natural course. You want to get some value for the player if only six months is remaining on the player’s contract and the player wants to get sold. The time to sell him? Sell him now or he can just walk away free at the end of his contract.
Maybe there’s an outside party interested, there’s another team interested in buying the player. It would be in the best interest of the team if they could afford to replace the player for six months and sell that player. The team gets money for the player, the third-party who has ownership in the player - he gets paid and then he’ll probably pay the player as well, so everyone gets paid. If the contract expires after six months, now the team - they don’t get anything, now the player is free, that third party now who owns 100% his rights arguably brings him up to another team and they can negotiate – I’ve got a talented player on a free transfer, for his transfer rights we want money up front. The team can say, ‘All right, we’ll give you x amount of money, we’ll keep 50% and you’ll keep the other 50%.’
Continue reading Part 3 of LE Eisenmenger's interview with MIke Wheeler here.
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