Geplaatst: wo jul 23, 2008 8:26 pm
Wat bedoel je hiermee, Harm?Harm schreef:Die slechte tweede seizoenshelft onder Koeman kan achteraf natuurlijk ook door Lemic veroorzaakt zijn.
Wat bedoel je hiermee, Harm?Harm schreef:Die slechte tweede seizoenshelft onder Koeman kan achteraf natuurlijk ook door Lemic veroorzaakt zijn.
Lemic schijnt gedreigd te hebben dat Gomes niet kon spelen als de boete van Aissati niet werd teruggedraaid.Op die manier hebben strubbelingen binnen de club wel degelijk invloed op de selectie.Bertje schreef:Ik dacht in eerste instantie dat je bedoelde dat Lemic tegen zijn zijn spelers gezegd zou hebben dat ze moesten zorgen voor een twee seizoenshelft. Dat lijkt me namelijk erg onwaarschijnlijk.
Ik denk niet dat selectiespelers zich erg veel aantrekken van eventuele strubbelingen binnen een club. Maar goed, het zou natuurlijk eventueel kunnen.
Zoals je ziet staat het er niet expliciet in. Maar het artikel gaat wel grotendeels over Traffic. En zoals gezegd, het maakt me in principe niet uit of Ajax samenwerkt met Lemic of met iemand anders van dat soort. Ik zou liever hebben dat investeringsmaatschappijen buiten de deur werden gehouden.Trading in Soccer Talent
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Some co-workers are sitting around their office here on a recent Monday afternoon, dissecting the weekend’s soccer matches and picking their top players.
One of the men likes a talented fullback. Another wants a player who has been scoring regularly for a top second division team. And the boss is keen to sign a teenage defender whose contract is up soon.
It could be a fantasy football draft in any office in America — only these trades are real. This is the office of Traffic, a Brazilian company leading a new, and controversial, wave of investment in Brazilian soccer.
Armed with 20 million reals of their own money (about $12 million) and another 20 million reals they hope to get from investors, Traffic is buying up contracts of young soccer players all over Brazil. They then lend the players to teams, who pay the players a salary and also allow them to showcase their talents. If they are recruited by a big European team, Traffic and its partners reap the largest share of the transfer fee. (The player, as usual, gets any signing bonus, and an often hefty salary.)
“Instead of investing in the stock market or real estate,” Julio Mariz, Traffic’s president, said, “these people are investing in buying the economic rights to football players.”
Similar efforts to invest in individual athletes have been discussed in baseball in the United States and in soccer in the United Kingdom recently, but none of those efforts has taken off as they have in Brazil.
The deals are questionable; soccer’s international governing body banned third-party involvement in transfers. But without outside investment many Brazilian clubs would fail financially.
Several funds like Traffic have sprung up over the last year, and some major Brazilian companies — including supermarket chains — are creating football departments to invest in young players they hope will one day send European clubs reaching for their checkbooks.
“We’ve been investing $10 million a year, but that is growing quickly because there are big profits to be made,” said Thiago Ferro, a partner in the supermarket chain Grupo Sonda’s department of football investment. “We’re providing returns of 150 percent a year.”
In soccer (or “football,” to the rest of the world), clubs once owned the economic rights to a player under contract to their team. If another team wanted to sign the player, it had to pay his current club a transfer fee, in addition to coming to terms with the player.
But in recent years, free agency has taken hold across the soccer world. And while players’ contracts are still held by teams, as international rules stipulate, investors are getting involved.
The new model is attractive to investors because one big sale can guarantee those spectacular returns. Traffic predicts a profit of 30 percent a year, Mr. Mariz said. Grupo Sonda expects even higher returns because, unlike Traffic, it is going after a few big trades rather than a large number of midlevel players. Grupo Sonda’s projected returns are higher because the strategy is more risky.
Traffic pays dividends every six months, raised from player trades. When a player is traded, investors split the transfer fee with clubs, according to their ownership percentages.
Brazilian clubs embrace the new investor model because the clubs get to raise cash without having to trade their players as quickly or as often. And when they do, inevitably, trade the players, the huge sums, as much as $50 million, guarantee the clubs’ survival.
“If we want a decent team we need financial help,” said Carlos Augusto Montenegro, vice president for soccer at Botafogo, a Rio de Janeiro club that has at least six players on loan from funds or individual investors.
“We know they are using us as a shop window, but it is good for the player, good for the agent and good for Botafogo,” he said. “If there was another alternative we’d look at it, but this is what we have today and it works.”
Last year, Bayern Munich spent a reported $19 million for Breno (Breno Vinicius Borges, formally, but few in Brazil would know him as such), an 18-year old defender who had played just 22 games for São Paulo. Italy’s A. C. Milan paid a similar fee for Internacional’s 17-year old striker Alexandre Pato.
It is not only the giants in the big leagues of England, Germany, Italy and Spain who want Brazilians. Last year, 1,085 Brazilian players were transferred to places as diverse as Vietnam, Qatar and the Faroe Islands, according to the Brazilian Football Confederation.
It was those kinds of numbers that spurred Traffic into action, Mr. Mariz said. The São Paulo-based firm began life in the 1980s, selling advertising space at soccer grounds. It moved into sports marketing and tournament administration and now owns the transmission rights to many of South America’s biggest soccer tournaments.
It recently shifted its focus to invest more heavily in the playing side. In addition to buying two teams, last year Traffic set up a fund called Cedro Participações, using $12 million of the firm’s own money. In the months since, 18 individuals have each bought one or more shares of $120,000, taking the fund total so far to more than $20 million.
The fund is intended to operate for three years, the same time span as an average contract, and Traffic will always hold more than a 50 percent stake, Mr. Mariz said.
So far the fund has bought all or part of 36 players, and 12 of them have gone to Palmeiras, one of Brazil’s biggest clubs and Traffic’s main partner in the venture.
Traffic executives meet with Palmeiras’s directors at least once a month to discuss the club’s roster. Traffic gives Palmeiras lists of available players. Palmeiras can also ask for Traffic’s help in securing a particular star.
But there are also potential downsides, especially for fans. Investors could be tempted to sell a player as soon as his value increases, robbing the team of a key figure at a vital moment. If funds control players on opposing teams, there is the appearance of conflict of interest. And many supporters fear that people with no emotional attachment to a club might exert too much control.
Gilberto Cipullo, Palmeiras’s vice president for football, said Traffic cannot sell players during certain key periods of the season and said that if a player’s value soars then he would be sold anyway.
Still, the involvement of third parties is controversial. A scandal in Europe over who owned two Argentine players transferred from the Brazilian club Corinthians to England in 2006 prompted football’s governing body, FIFA, to ban third-party ownership in January.
Traffic gets around that rule by signing all players to their own small club, Desportivo Brasil, and lending them to partner teams such as Palmeiras, Mr. Mariz said. Grupo Sonda signs over all rights, except for those to future financial gains, to the participating club, Mr. Ferro said.
A FIFA spokesman said it had not investigated the Brazilian system because no “formal case has been brought to our attention.”
“It is clear that they are not supposed to do that, and it goes against the regulations,” the FIFA spokesman said, citing the January rule, which states, “No club shall enter into a contract which enables any other party to that contract or third party to acquire the ability to influence, in employment or transfer-related matters, its independence, its policies or the performance of its teams.”
Fund managers in Brazil said they are working within the law and stressed they have no plans to halt their dealings. With clubs desperate for cash, and investors desperate for profits, the trend seems set to continue.
“There are some irresponsible individuals who just want to make a short-term profit,” said the president of the Brazilian Association of Football Agents, Leo Rabello. “But if it is done properly then it will change football. Investment will come into Brazil.”
Dank je voor de opheldering. Ik vond het al vreemd, de toppers van traffic gaan niet naar Bayern.Thomas schreef:Joey, in dat artikel van je staat nergens dat Breno bij Traffic zit hoor. Ze hebben het over Grupo Sonda.
Volgens mij staat er ook niet in dat hij bij Grupo Sonda zit. Wat is trouwens Grupo Sonda? Welke mensen zijn daarbij betrokken. Het is een schimmige wereld.Thomas schreef:Ok. Voor mij staat er nergens bewijs dat Breno bij Traffic zit. Ik ben benieuwd of anderen dat wel zo lezen. Volgens mij gaat het in het artikel in zijn geval alleen over Grupo Sonda. En ik heb al eerder iets gehoord over Breno waardoor ik denk dat hij zeker niet bij Traffic zit.
Mooi bedacht, maar volgens mij ligt het niet iets gecompliceerder. Die investeerders (mooi woord voor mensenhandelaren) hebben grote belangen, belangen die veel verder gaan dan dat van de individuele speler. Bij PSV heb je gezien hoe Lemic namens Traffic probeerde grip te krijgen op de gehele club om die investeringen veilig te stellen. Daarbij werd chantage en het inzetten van spelers tegen de clubleiding niet geschuwd. Op den duur kan de club a.h.w. gegijzeld worden door zo'n investeringsmaatschappij of netwerk.Als je in Brazilië zaken wilt doen moet je je bij de grote talenten steeds vaker inlaten met dit soort bureaus. Alex Silva, Thiago Silva, Thiago Neves, Breno, ze zitten er allemaal bij. In principe is het ook geen probleem, want er zijn genoeg clubs die zaken met hen doen en geen etalage worden. In de meeste gevallen bepalen de investeerders ook niet verder waar een speler na z'n eerste stap in Europa heen gaat, maar snoepen ze wellicht nog wat mee.
De PSV-supporters hebben jarenlang volgehouden dat er niets aan de hand was. Ja, Alex was gehuurd, maar verder? Gomes was zogenaamd helemaal niet van Lemic en die andere spelers ook niet. Pas toen de bom barstte, werd een en ander duidelijk. Mocht Lemic bij Ajax binnen zijn, dan krijgen we dat heus niet te horen. We zullen dat merken aan kleine dingen, bijvoorbeeld aan het feit dat steeds spelers worden binnenloodst die aan het netwerk van Lemic gelieerd zijn.Jöhnk schreef:Je moet de spelers kopen die je wil kopen. Als je dat blijft doen zul je weinig problemen tegenkomen.
Het lijkt me dat Ajax bij Lemic is uitgekomen omdat men Sulejmani wilde, en niet andersom. Vervolgens heeft Lemic Ajax op Henrique gewezen. Ajax heeft die jongen proberen te halen, maar dat is niet gelukt. Als Lemic of Bertolucci zou bepalen waar die jongen speelt dan hebben ze blijkbaar bepaald dat hij bij Barca/Leverkusen moest spelen.
Aissati is volgens mij een heel ander verhaal. Pas toen hij bijna in Utrecht zat kreeg Ajax door dat die jongen heel makkelijk en goedkoop op te halen viel. Een buitenkansje dus.
In Zuid-Amerika misschien niet, nee. Maar we hebben ons ook altijd zonder Zuidamerikaanse spelers gered.Jöhnk schreef:In dat geval kun je met haast niemand meer zaken doen.
In die wereld krijg je geen cadeautjes. Als Ajax toppers wil halen die het normaal niet kan krijgen, moet daar wat tegenover staan. En dan bedoel ik niet alleen geld. Chelsea had Alex aan tien andere clubs kunnen verhuren, maar PSV werkte het meest mee.Het zal mij worst wezen met wie Ajax zaken doet, zolang men maar de spelers haalt die men zelf wil, en niet de spelers die Lemic of wie dan ook wil. Als je Lazovic boven Suarez gaat verkiezen omdat hij bij de ene of de andere zaakwaarnemer zit, dan is het einde zoek.