Who is behind ​„Foot­ball leaks“?

We prefer not to go in to such details. Our pro­ject is shaking ever­ything from top to bottom, so as you can guess we are crea­ting a lot of enemies, powerful people within the busi­ness. And for them trans­pa­rency in foot­ball is a pro­blem. Reports say you are a group from Por­tugal. Is that cor­rect?

Yes, we are from Por­tugal. When was your orga­ni­za­tion ​„founded“?

We decided to start all this back in Sep­tember 2015, and our main goal at the time was to expose all the lies and con­tro­ver­sies within Por­tu­guese clubs. Last summer’s transfer market was the most intense ever in Por­tugal, there were some sho­cking trans­fers, for example Jorge Jesus move from Ben­fica to Spor­ting, con­tro­versy and many unans­wered ques­tions, mostly invol­ving Spor­ting Lisbon. We decided to help the people under­stand what really hap­pened so we focused on unmas­king that. And for­tu­n­a­tely we were able to go even fur­ther thanks to our sources. Some sites com­pared you to the likes of Edward Snowden and other whist­leb­lo­wers. What do you think of it and what are your aims?

All we want is trans­pa­rency in the sport we all love. Some clubs have no respect for the fans, ever­ything is a taboo; the players wages, transfer con­tracts, secret clauses, inter­me­diates, etc. The clubs hide ever­ything. In our opi­nion NBA is a good example of trans­pa­rency, there are no secrets. Ever­yone knows how much a spe­cific player or coach earns, and they them­selves do not hide it. That’s what foot­ball needs.

Con­tracts and agree­ments bet­ween two par­ties are not intended to be shared for the public – whe­ther it is in foot­ball or else­where.

If ever­yone would think like that there would be no Wiki­leaks, Lux­leaks, Off­shore leaks, etc. Ever­yone would still live in a lie… Foot­ball is losing a lot of credi­bi­lity, the total lack of trans­pa­rency and the huge amount of undis­c­losed fees are dis­re­spec­tful for the fans, so someone had to do some­thing. For­tu­n­a­tely by put­ting these files online we are finally making an impact across the world, and people are star­ting to dis­cuss more about those topics. We all want the same. A more trans­pa­rent a credible sport.



It seems that Third-Party-Ownership is your main topic. If so, how come?

In our opi­nion there is huge lack of infor­ma­tion sur­roun­ding those Invest­ment funds. Their exis­tence inside foot­ball raises important issues in terms of poten­tial con­flicts of inte­rests and match fixing. And of course there’s the risk of money laun­de­ring and other cri­minal activi­ties. Those funds only have a finan­cial inte­rest, which clearly leads to con­trac­tual insta­bi­lity bet­ween foot­ball clubs and players. Is there any proof for money laun­de­ring yet?

We don’t want to accuse anyone wit­hout enough evi­dence, but, for example, Doyen’s struc­ture seems prone to money laun­de­ring. You gained popu­la­rity for the first time when you published con­tracts of Doyen and Twente. Is it an emble­matic case of TPO-rule vio­la­tion?

Yes, that’s an emble­matic case. It shows the dama­ging inter­fe­rences of TPO in foot­ball clubs policy tog­e­ther with a cri­minal mis­ma­nage­ment and an irre­spon­sible pre­si­dent. What Doyen Sports do is totally cri­minal and harmful for the clubs. If you ana­lyze all their Eco­nomic Rights Par­ti­ci­pa­tion Agree­ment (ERPA), not only with Twente, but with several clubs, you will see they take advan­tage of cash-strapped clubs and impose unfair terms on the clubs. That’s what we can call ​‘loan shar­king’. Nevertheless those agree­ments pro­bably breach the FIFA Regu­la­tions on the Status and Transfer of Players article 18bis. Most of the clubs involved in those agree­ments can be in deep trouble and pos­sibly face a FIFA sanc­tion.

In one docu­ment it is said that Twente had to com­pen­sate 50 per­cent of the refused offer for a player whose transfer rights shares lay in the hands of Doyen. But how would Doyen find out about a cer­tain offer and it‚s details for a player?

Because usually Doyen is the one sear­ching for offers, and when they pre­sent it to the club, they have no other choice than to sell the player. Doyen’s con­tracts usually con­tain aggres­sive clau­sules, similar to loans­har­king. So inves­tors could have actually put clubs under pres­sure to sell the players?

Unfor­tu­n­a­tely that’s common, and hap­pens behind the curtain. Inves­tors place the players in cer­tain clubs with the pro­mise that in 1 or 2 years they can move them again to bigger clubs. That’s pro­fi­table for the invest­ment funds and their fellow agents. The sel­ling of transfer rights to pri­vate inves­tors often is an ​„open secret“ in foot­ball. How does this open­ness cor­re­spond with the pro­hi­bi­tion of exactly that action in inter­na­tional foot­ball regu­la­tions?

In Europe Third Party Invest­ment deals are still hap­pe­ning behind the curtain but nowa­days dis­guised as ​„Scou­ting Agree­ments“ and ​„Inter­me­diary Agree­ments“. There’s still a lot of money cir­cu­la­ting behind the curtain, and not even FIFA has the slight idea of what’s going on. The gro­wing influ­ence of player agents, and the use of off­shore cor­po­ra­tions con­ti­nues to be very pro­ble­matic.