Football finance expert Kieran Maguire has recently discussed Wolverhampton Wanderers’ signing of Portuguese striker Fabio Silva.
Last week, it was revealed by the Old Gold that they had secured the services of the ‘highly-rated’ attacker for a club-record fee from FC Porto (per Wolves).
It was then reported elsewhere that the fee was £35.6m (per BBC), which is £5.6m over Wolves’ previous club-record fee of £30m to make Raul Jimenez’s loan move from SL Benfica permanent.
However, in the latest episode of The Price of Football podcast, Maguire discussed Silva’s signing and focussed on the agent fees that the Old Gold paid.
He said: “This is a really weird story. This is to do with Fabio Silva, who became Wolves’ record signing [for] around about £35m. This is for a player who’s scored one goal. He’s a striker and he’s scored one goal in his career – [I] appreciate he’s only a kid.
“[I] went on to some Portuguese websites [and] the agents are picking up €10 million (£9.2m) in total out of this deal, of which £6.4m is going to Jorge Mendes, who’s not even the player’s agent.
“So, what he’s getting the money for – I don’t know whether it’s sort of an introduction fee between the two clubs, but he’s not the player’s agent – but he’s picking up this enormous sum.
“Mendes is this sort of Svengali figure, he came into Wolverhampton Wanderers as an advisor, and that’s his official title, and he is Nuno Espirito Santo’s agent.
“He runs this very successful agency, it’s got [Cristiano] Ronaldo, [David] de Gea, Bernardo Silva, Jose Mourinho, on his books. So, he’s very, very good at what he does, but he doesn’t half get some big, big fees out of this.”
TIF Thoughts…
As can be seen in what the finance expert had to say, Maguire believes that the amount that Wolves paid in agent fees for the Fabio Silva deal is somewhat questionable.
Do Wolves pay too much money to Jorge Mendes?
No, it's all worth it
Yes, we should stop
However, while the fees do seem high for this particular deal, during the 2019/20 season, the Old Gold spent the eighth-lowest amount in fees to agents (per BBC).
During the term, Wolves spent £8.6m on agents, which is far lower than Liverpool – who spent the most in the Premier League on agents with a whopping £30.3m.