Football agents are routinely portrayed as one of the game’s biggest problems. They are accused of chasing commissions, unsettling players and taking money out of the sport.
Rafaela Pimenta, one of the most influential agents in world football, believes that reputation is not entirely accidental.
Speaking on the High Performance podcast, Pimenta argued that there is a deliberate agenda to demonise football agents because effective representation gives players greater power.
“I think there’s an agenda to demoralise agents,” she said.
Her argument begins with a distinction that is often missing from the public debate. There are bad agents, just as there are bad doctors, engineers and politicians. Their existence does not mean an entire profession is corrupt.
Yet football agents, Pimenta believes, are regularly treated as though every representative is a “bad apple”.
Why football agents make people uncomfortable
A good agent is not simply present to arrange a transfer. The agent advises the player, reads contracts, negotiates employment conditions and challenges decisions that may not be in the player’s interests.
That can make the representative an uncomfortable presence for clubs, governing bodies and other stakeholders.
Pimenta says players at the highest level possess extraordinary intelligence and mental strength. They manage pressure, injuries, recovery and the demands of performing several times a week. But it is unreasonable to expect them to combine elite sporting performance with expert knowledge of contracts, finance and negotiation.
When a player is properly represented, the balance of power changes. A club is no longer negotiating with an isolated employee. It is dealing with a player supported by someone who understands the industry and is prepared to demand fair treatment.
In Pimenta’s characteristically direct language, that agent can become “a pain in the ass”.
That, she suggests, is precisely the point.
Why is football different from Hollywood or American sport?
Pimenta also questioned why public discussion of agents’ earnings appears to be particularly aggressive in football.
When a Hollywood actor signs a major contract, there is rarely a widespread campaign against the actor’s agent. The same level of hostility is not generally directed at representatives working in the NBA or NFL.
In football, however, agent fees and player salaries are constant subjects of public controversy.
Pimenta’s comparison raises an important question: why is professional representation treated as normal in entertainment and other sports but as inherently suspicious in football?
The answer may be found partly in football’s history. Players were once tied to clubs under highly restrictive employment conditions. England’s maximum wage was only abolished in 1961, while greater contractual freedom arrived much later.
The modern agent helped move football away from that paternalistic model. Players became better equipped to negotiate salaries, transfers and control over their careers. From that perspective, hostility towards agents can also be understood as resistance to player power.
The player-workload battle
Pimenta connected the issue to one of football’s most urgent debates: player workload.
The game continues to add competitions and commercial commitments. Pre-season tours that were once intended to prepare players physically have become international entertainment products. Leading players can move from domestic seasons into international tournaments, club competitions and commercial tours with almost no meaningful break.
Players usually want to play. Clubs want their best footballers on the pitch. Broadcasters, sponsors, federations and supporters want the biggest names involved.
That leaves the agent as one of the few people positioned to say that a player has reached his physical limit.
“Somebody needs to remind these people these are human beings. They’re not robots,” Pimenta told the podcast.
An agent who calls for regulated playing time or proper recovery may be inconvenient. But that intervention is part of protecting the player whose performance sustains the entire product.
A profession that players continue to need
Pimenta offered a simple test of whether agents still provide value: players continue to employ them.
Obsolete professions disappear when their services are no longer needed. Footballers, by contrast, are not abandoning representation. They are looking for better representatives. Clubs also regularly use agents to establish contacts, conduct negotiations and complete deals.
None of this excuses unethical behaviour. Agents should be accountable, transparent and subject to effective regulation. Players and their families must also conduct careful due diligence before signing a representation agreement.
But regulation is different from demonisation.
The important question is not whether football should eliminate agents. It is whether players receive competent, independent and ethical representation.
Pimenta’s argument challenges football to examine who benefits when all agents are presented as greedy or unnecessary. If the result is that players have less leverage, weaker advice and fewer people prepared to challenge the system, then the campaign against agents may not be protecting footballers at all.
It may simply be making them easier to control.
Watch Rafaela Pimenta’s complete High Performance interview, and explore her career, agency and client roster in the Rafaela Pimenta profile on FootballAgencies.com.
