Top footballers these days seem to have a team of advisors "looking" after their interests and making a load of cash in the process. Note I am saying advisors and not agents as quite often these advisors include friends and families. This is not always a bad thing for the footballer as family members can actually have their best interests and not just financial interests such as an agent. However, when there are large amounts of money involved it can merge even family members minds of what is best for the footballer and what is best for their wallets and a footballer can be persuaded to make bad choices. When we are at a stage where even Barcelona can't even keep Neymar I think it is time to look at footballers transfers again and who is influencing the footballer's decisions. I think the best way to do this is to make football transfers completely transparent, no undisclosed transfer fees and a complete breakdown of who got paid by either club in the transfer, and make this information public. If a company gets paid then it needs to be stated who is on the board of directors so everyone knows who has had an interest in the transfer. Hopefully this will help clubs when researching a footballer as they will be able to have an idea who is advising the footballer and if they push them regularly to transfer to another club. If these people are "advising" more than one footballer then clubs can avoid buying footballers who have these "advisors" if they so wish. At the moment clubs only know a footballer's agent as this the only registered advisor a footballer has. It can hopefully also help protect a footballer's reputation as they won't have there heads turned, stay in the right frame of mind, go on strike etc (see Van Dijk and Neymar) as they push for a big money transfer. Every transfer window there at least one protracted transfer where there is a serious break down in relations between the a footballer and their club as they aggressively push for a move. Hopefully complete transparence in transfers will stop this happening.
