WHEN SECRET BECOMES EXPLICIT Last week of October. Middle of a day. Pini Zahavi arrives at a meeting at Les Ambassadeurs - a private club in Mayfair, one of the most respectable areas of London. In a club restaurant, he has a business conversation with Anglo-Iranian businessman Kia Jurabchian, who is about to acquire West Ham. On the table are mobile phones, diaries, a glass of champagne and a tray with Belgian chocolates.
Pini Zahavi is the first and only football super agent. Business partners smoke rounded Cuban cigars, discussing the reasons for the prolonged process of a change of power at the “hammers”. Along the way, Zahavi receives calls on both mobile phones, easily jumping from his native Hebrew to Portuguese, German and English, discusses future trips and deals. “If they give 15 million euros for a guy from River Plate, then maybe. But the price is growing every day, ”he warns the interlocutor, and then, with a smile on his lips, sets out a short biography of a young Argentine football player. Jurabchian, meanwhile, mentions the president of Benfica, asks how many Zahavi need for seats for the Champions League match between Arsenal and CSKA.
Contrary to the popular belief that financial transactions in football are devoid of transparency and are secret behind seven seals, these two behave at ease, if not blithely. All the time that I spent with Zahavi and Jurabchian, they were polite, cheerful and sincere. When the Brazilian Corinthians striker Carlos Alberto appears on the threshold, having won the Champions League with Porto under the leadership of Jose Mourinho, Zahavi asks him to wait until we finish the conversation. Why did he agree to give me his first large-scale interview, Zahavi explains simply: “I liked your voice on the phone. That's how I judge people. "A fisherman sees a fisherman from afar - I used to be a journalist too."
FROM THE JOURNALIST TO THE MEDIA MAGNET
November 1981, Belfast. Israeli team is preparing for the qualifying match of the World Cup against Northern Ireland. Zahawi, while a sports journalist from Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s largest newspaper, sits on the bed of his hotel room and smokes a cigar in a fitting setting. Next to him is Yossi Melman, who also came to cover the game, but as the London correspondent of Ha'aretz, the Israeli broadband. “Yossi,” Zahavi addresses him. “I want you to learn something.” Learn from me: every four or five years I change newspapers. ” Before going to Yedioth at the age of 36, Zahavi worked in the sports edition Hadashot Hasport, which he left after the 1974 World Cup. After the Belfast parting words, his colleague Zahavi worked for Yedioth for another four years, and then went to a newspaper called simply Hadashot. Melman recalls a lesson 25 years ago. “Hadashot Hasport was very popular in Israel. Pini told me: “Yossi, if you move from one place to another, you get compensation and a higher salary.” And then I asked: “Are you interested in making money?” He looked at me in surprise: “Of course. I’m not going to remain a poor sportsman all my life! "And he laughed ..."
Since then, Zahavi has made a fortune, according to some estimates - at least 65 million pounds. Enough to allow yourself to retire and continue to live in great comfort. But Zahavi, according to one of his companions, loves his current job too much. Pini Zahavi is an excellent football assistant. This is a person who is able to initiate, negotiate and conclude any transaction - transfer of a football player, transfer of a coach, sale of a club. Zahavi is involved in most of the notable events in England of this kind, directly or indirectly. Sometimes it seems that no serious deal can be concluded without his participation. Zahavi probably has the widest circle of football acquaintances. “Yes, I have very great connections,” he smiles. “Because I have never let anyone down in the world.” And what I do, I do honestly, without any tricks. I speak as if in spirit. ” Zahavi's career ascent coincided with the transformation of football into a global phenomenon of our time. The riches and influence of sports No. 1 are increasing due to the increase in the composition of the participants in the World Cup and the creation of the Champions League, and a sharp jump in revenue from television and sponsors transformed the national championships. He made the English Premier League the richest in the world.
Zahavi was involved in some of the most scandalous events of recent years. Such as the transfer of Rio Ferdinand from Leeds to Manchester United in 2002, costing the Red Devils £ 30 million, or secret negotiations with Chelsea Sven-Eran Ericsson in July 2003 and Ashley Cole in January 2005th. Ferdinand and Cole went to the camp of the most hated enemies of their former clubs, which infuriated the fans. And Ericsson at the time of negotiations with Chelsea was the coach of the England team. However, no matter what happens, Zahavi always came out dry from the water. As an agent, he is registered in Israel, therefore, is not subject to the jurisdiction of the English Football Association. While Kenyon, Jonathan Barnett (Agent Cole), Mourinho and Chelsea were subjected to disciplinary sanctions after these meetings were publicized, the FA and the Premier League were unable to dig into Zahavi. However, in order to prevent such cases, the FA has already changed its charter as necessary.
Recently, Zahavi, whose friends include Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Knesset speaker (possibly future president) Reuven Rivlin, has diversified his interests. Together with Eli Azur, the owner of several Russian-language newspapers in Israel, Zahavi is the owner of the media group Charlton, which owns the rights to show in Israel the matches of the English Premier League and the national elite division. After the 2006 World Cup was shown in Israel only on paid TV channels, the popularity of Zahavi fell dramatically.
GUIDING STAR
In the summer of 2003, Zahavi facilitated the arrival of Roman Abramovich at Chelsea. Two years earlier, a mutual friend introduced him to the governor of Chukotka in Moscow, and Zahavi cemented his friendship by inviting a billionaire to a Champions League match between Manchester United and Real Madrid in April 2003. They say that it was at this match that Abramovich fell ill with football irrevocably. Zahavi generally played a key role in concluding this deal. He also contributed to the influx of new players who immediately started arriving at Stamford Bridge. Of the 111 million pounds spent by the club on summer selection 2003, the agent accounted for 5 million.
In January of this year, Zahavi helped Alexander Gaydamak buy Portsmouth. Alexander is the son of Arkady Gaydamak, an exiled oligarch who was born in now independent Ukraine and is the owner of the Jerusalem Beitar.
In August, Zahavi introduced England to a new football reality where players are owned by third parties, not clubs. As a result of a sensational deal in West Ham, football players from Argentina's national team Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano were. The transition was facilitated by Media Sports Investment, a concern formerly led by Jurabchan and for which Zahavi works as an intermediary. “For South America, commercial companies that own players have been standard practice for more than a quarter of a century,” he told me. “It will become such here too, if suddenly English football faces a problem of survival.”
Zahavi is the only consultant to the Football Heroes Foundation established last summer. Its members include former referee of the English Premier League David Ellery and lawyer David Griffith Jones, specializing in sports law. The purpose of the fund is to raise 100 million pounds from private sources for the acquisition of commercial rights to football players and make money on their resale. This, according to Zahavi, is one of the many typical financial schemes in which he is involved, and MSI is the most famous of them. In 2004, MSI actually leased the Brazilian Corinthians for 10 years, buying back a controlling stake and paying £ 23 million for moving to São Paulo Tevez and Mascherano to their Argentinean clubs Boca Juniors and River Plate. The rights to Tevez and Mascherano belong to MSI (100 and 50% respectively; the other half of the rights to Mascherano are owned by the Global Sports Agency, owned by Zahavi himself).
What are the advantages of football players when their rights are controlled by third parties? One of the businessmen, who knows firsthand the circumstances of Tevez and Mascherano’s move to London, believes that “the players do not care who owns them - a club, private individual or company - as long as they are taken care of”.
Tevez’s transition from Boca to Corinthians was mediated by Argentinean agent Fernando Hidalgo, a partner of Zahavi in their joint venture, HAZ Sports, based in Buenos Aires. It is assumed that the services of an agent for arranging transfers of Tevez and Mascherano cost the club from east London no less than 5 million pounds. But the deal provides for a clause according to which West Ham is obliged to sell players if they receive an offer within five years. If West Ham wants to keep the Argentines, he will have to pay 40 million pounds. This is the so-called purchase option, as opposed to the more common contractual clause on the sale, according to which the player must be sold if the transfer price is agreed.
Zahavi is not a shareholder of MSI; Apparently, the company is owned by Badri Patarkatsishvili, a Georgian billionaire and the owner of Tbilisi Dynamo, and the exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who lives in London, provides some support. In the deal to transfer the Argentines to West Ham, Zahavi acted as an agent for the “hammers,” and most of the five agent millions would go to him, apparently.
"ENGLISH IS AFRAID OF CHANGE"
Does the fact that foreigners own the club and third-party players play a role in our age of globalization? Jimmy Hill, who has devoted football to football for more than 50 years as a player, coach, administrator and media expert, believes that the expansion of the oligarchs and commercial schemes like the Heroes Fund are all good. But only as long as enough money is spinning in football, through which the clubs remain solvent. “It may seem strange, but the fans themselves are to blame for what is happening because of their unrealistic beliefs that their team should always win,” Hill says.
But Gordon Taylor, executive director of the Association of Professional Football Players, is understandably against such a practice: “It's like trafficking in human beings. When outsiders have their financial interest in the players, this
leads to destabilization. "
Kevin Roberts, editorial director of SportBusiness, a respectable monthly magazine, agrees with him: “There is a danger that football players will cease to be part of the club’s assets and will turn into finger water. In this case, from a financial point of view, the club no longer owns the rights to the player for real and does not receive proper compensation when he leaves. Over the past decades, football has changed significantly. In the 70s and 80s, it seemed that many clubs were able to win the title. Not anymore. When Arsenal went to visit Manchester United in the current championship, there were only four rounds behind, but people have already begun to predict the “gunners” the collapse of champion hopes in case of failure. But this would be only their second defeat of the season ...
That's what Abramovich’s money did: they set the bar for competition, which is much higher than before. ”
Dan Jones, football analyst at London-based auditing firm Deloitte and Touche, however, cites a curious historical fact: “A phenomenon such as third-party property has already been encountered in English football. When Danny Schittu from Watford played for Queens Park Rangers, he belonged to a third party (Alex Winton, one of the KPR fans, not only bought a defender for £ 250,000, but paid him his salary for the first season). But for investors, such investments are a real risk, because they cannot dispose of the player as they see fit and their chances of earning turn into fortune-telling on coffee grounds. ”
Zahavi, meanwhile, is convinced that this form of running the football business is workable. “Even if a football player is owned by a company or individuals, it still belongs to the club, because according to FIFA rules the club owns federal rights and player registration. A private individual or company may own only economic rights. ”
According to Zahavi, Gordon Taylor, like many others in English football, is simply afraid of change. Xenophobia also plays a role. “The flywheel of the campaign against strangers has already been launched, and I am one of its targets,” the agent complains to me. - In England they do not understand the essence. It’s wiser to buy a football player you’re not sure about for the amount of £ 10 million and if you share the risk with a partner. If a player becomes a star and you can earn 30 million for him, then, of course, you will only blame yourself. But if a football player turns out to be mediocre or illiquid at all, you say: “Thank God, I was not the only one who gave the thrush.” That’s the whole point. ”
CASE AT THE AIRPORT
Zahavi turned his first deal as an agent in 1979, when he was a journalist. It was the transition of the Israeli defender Avi Cohen from the Tel Aviv-based Maccabi to Liverpool, which cost the Merseysiders £ 200,000. “Then everything was different, and I just loved football. But this deal showed me how to make money on football. ”
There was a great deal of luck in that deal, but this circumstance only emphasizes Zahavi’s quick thinking. “Every four weeks I went to England to play football with Reuven Rivlin. Once we lingered at Heathrow Airport due to bad weather. I caught the eye of Liverpool’s secretary Peter Robinson, whom I asked: “Why don’t you pay attention to one good Israeli footballer?” They sent their scout Tom Saunders to see Avi Cohen in action, and he soon arrived in England to viewing. "Bob Paisley, the then coach of Liverpool, liked it, and we shook hands."
Cohen speaks warmly of his friend: “I knew Pini from Yedioth. Every Saturday, he covered the Maccabi games, and wrote a lot about me. We talked for many years. He is very friendly, honest, you can have a good chat with him. ” Cohen returned to Maccabi in 1981, and in 87 played at the Rangers with Graham Sunness, a close friend of Zahavi.
It unexpectedly took a long time before Zahavi concluded the following significant deal in the 90th - he formalized the transfer of Israeli striker Ronnie Rosenthal from Liège Standard to Liverpool. Why did Zahavi not make important deals for so long? “I was still a journalist. And the players, whom I could sell to foreign clubs, in Israel, by and large, were not. In addition, due to constant attacks from journalists, I, unfortunately, suspended my agent activities for several years. Although many journalists, when it comes to money, people and news, are the same merchants. They simply could not forgive me for doing this openly. ”
During the 80s, he diligently built bridges. He organized friendly matches at the national team level in Israel. He invited Dalglish and Sunness, the then captain of Liverpool, to spend their vacation in Eilat, and they came there every summer. Able to behave in a relaxed manner, Zahavi brought oranges for footballers and staff from his homeland to Melwood, to the Liverpool training base.
After the deal with Rosenthal, Zahavi's authority began to grow. Especially in South America, where, among other football players, he represented the interests of Chilean striker Marcelo Salas. But the organization of the transition of Israeli midfielder Eyal Berkovich from Southampton to West Ham in 1997 is one of the most important deals for him, because it was in the process of its implementation that Zahavi spotted the young Rio Ferdinand. “When I first saw him on the field, I instantly realized that he could be the best in the world in his position. He had everything for this. ”
And Zahavi became his agent. Today Ferdinand is Manchester's highest-paid footballer, earning £ 110,000 a week, not including advertising revenue. Last year, Ferdinand got into the lens of a paparazzi with Zahavi and Peter Kenyon in a London restaurant just at the time when his contract with Manchester United needed to be extended. Zahavi dismisses all suspicions, calling the meeting absolutely innocent.
26 HOUR WORKING DAY
Pinchas Zahavi was born in the small town of Ness Ziona, which is 20 miles southeast of Tel Aviv, with a population of about 10,000 people. The son of the store owner, he went to kindergarten and elementary school with the current president of the Haifa Maccabi, Jacob Shahar.
To this day, the Shahar is his close friend. Recently, in Haifa during the European Cup match with Auxerre, they could be seen sitting in the same box with Sven-Eran Ericsson, which inevitably provoked a wave of talk that the Swede was about to replace Alan Purdue as West Ham coach. “We played football together at the Ness Zion Sports Center, and that was our passion,” says Shahar. “And even then Pini was drawn to pen and paper.”
Zahavi confirms: “Football has been my love since childhood. I played for the local team, and before joining the army, I trained its youth composition for two years. ” Zahavi was 22 when his journalistic career began. “When I arrived at Yedioth Ahronoth, there were only two columns assigned to the sport, but I increased the volume to three pages, then to six, and finally to nine.” Newspaper colleague Shaul Isenberg says of Zahavi’s dedication to work: “Pini was an excellent journalist, one of the best in the country. And terribly passionate. His working day consisted of 26 hours, for which he had to wake up two hours earlier than going to bed. Am I surprised at his success? Not at all. "
Zahavi, now a widower with two children in her arms, began to make extensive contacts with the football people during the 1974 World Cup. “This tournament helped me a lot. It was then that I started making friends and building bridges of friendship. ” By the beginning of the 90s, he had overgrown with extensive connections. “Graham (Sunness), Kenny (Dalglish), Terry (Venables) and Ron (Atkinson) are my close friends, however, like 90% of current English coaches. In addition, I made good friends with many football players and we are now like brothers. A quarter of a century ago, English coaches did not know anything about players from the continent, and in the newspapers it was impossible to find even the results of matches of European leagues. They didn’t care what was happening in world football. I helped them change. ”
Zahavi owns a network of offices in Tel Aviv, but, despite his wealth, lives in a modest, as his friends say, apartment for 200,000 pounds on the sea coast in the northern part of the capital. She also rents an apartment in Marble Arch, in central London. There, on the mantelpiece in the living room, there is a photograph, like a seal fastening his friendship with Sir Alex Ferguson: they both embrace each other.
FUTURE FOOTBALL FOR AFRICA AND SOUTH AMERICA
Keep busy on the go. During our first conversation, he talked about trips to Ukraine and South America, and when we met again, he planned new air travels. When I asked if there were other interests in his life besides football, he simply answered: “No. Other sports I don’t even watch. Nothing interests me more. Football, soccer and football again. ”
During our last conversation, he was already in Tel Aviv and notes of tension appeared in his voice - perhaps because the process of changing the ownership of West Ham did not develop according to his scenario.
Zahavi's business interests are truly labyrinthine. He owns the company Global Sports Agency, which is registered in Gibraltar and is mainly responsible for the Portuguese and South European destinations, while trying to create a second Corinthians from the Warsaw Club KSP.
He has a wide network of scouts and partners scattered all over the world, especially in Africa, which Zahavi considers the most important area for football. “I do not think that Europe will ever bring forth an abundance of new talents. The best footballers are born in Africa and South America, so I do so much work in Brazil and Argentina. ”
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TEXT: JAMIE JACKSON / GUARDIAN NEWS & MEDIA LIMITED 2006
PHOTO: RICHARD SAKER 2006
| No. 1 (68) January 15 - January 28, 2007 |
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