According to football finance expert, Kieran Maguire, Tottenham Hotspur paid super-agent Jorge Mendes well over the odds to seal Matt Doherty’s capture from Wolves last summer.
Doherty was one of the first singings to arrive through the door at Tottenham last summer, with some Spurs fans considering the rumoured £16m fee that the club paid for the right-back to be a bargain.
The former Wolves man has not had the impact he would have hoped for since arriving in North London but he has shown some positive signs recently as he has got more game time under his belt due to the injury to Serge Aurier.
It was reported last week that £6m of the £16m that Spurs paid for Doherty went to the defender’s agent, Mendes, with Wolves only pocketing £10m from the 29-year-old’s sale.
Reports have further indicated that Mendes is set to play a key role in Tottenham’s transfer business in the next window, with the club set to rely on the agent’s connections to pull off bargain deals amidst the financial impact of the pandemic.
However, Maguire insisted that the £6m cut that Mendes received for Doherty’s transfer (37.5 per cent of the transfer fee) was way too high.
He told Football Insider: “That’s much, much higher than normal. Normally, you’re looking at 10-15% max.
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“There are proposals from Fifa to restrict the amount an agent can take from a particular deal.
“The agents’ trade union is trying to push back on this saying it’s a restriction of trade.
“There is nothing capping agents fees. But from the club’s point of view, Wolves lost 40% of the transfer fee. If it’s embedded into a contract then you’ve got to accept it.”
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As Maguire points out, it was not Spurs but Wolves who lost out on the Doherty deal due to inflated agent fees. While Daniel Levy has historically been hesitant to pay big agent fees, I can potentially see that changing this summer if the Tottenham chairman feels that he has to rely on the likes of Mendes to get some bargain deals over the line.
It will be a major challenge for Spurs to strengthen their squad in the next window given the lack of transfer funds due to the substantial drop in revenue. In addition, it is also likely to prove difficult to raise funds by moving on some of our fringe players as not many clubs around Europa are likely to have money to spend in the summer.
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