MOSCOW, April 10, Sergei Fuks. Member of the State Duma Committee on physical culture and sports Roman Teryushkov believes that sports agents are not needed in Russian sports in the 21st century.
«»Agents are an anachronism that is not needed in the 21st century. They parasitize the clubs and the country. We raise players, and they send them abroad, receive money without investing a penny themselves. We are talking about fines of 50 thousand rubles, but in football the amounts amount to tens of millions. I think we need to talk about banning the work of intermediary organizations. I doubt that the conditional CSKA and Zenit will not be able to do without an agent when transferring a football player,» Teryushkov said during a speech in the State Duma.
Deputy General Director of the Russian Hockey Federation (RHF), Alexander Kiknadze, did not agree with Teryushkov’s proposed ban on intermediary organizations. “A complete ban will lead to the fact that we will harm the institute itself and the hockey players, we will do more harm than good. I know many stories when agents help with housing, they actually replace fathers. We need a mechanism that will help punish unscrupulous agents. Here «(Alexander) Ovechkin plays — is that bad? The bad thing is that agents take children away. But if, for example, (Kirill) Kaprizov leaves, what's wrong with that? This is a role model, the hockey player won the Olympics and left as a leader for the National Hockey League club,» — said Kiknadze.
Deputy Secretary General of the Russian Football Union (RFU) Denis Rogachev noted that last year payments to agents amounted to 3 billion rubles.
«»We must impose sanctions on clubs and players who interact with unaccredited agents: fines, disqualifications. This is a very controversial area of activity, they have been wanting to ban it for decades. In recent years, we have noticed an increase in the amounts paid to agents. For example, last year this amount was 3 billion rubles. But last year we introduced a limit according to the International Football Federation (FIFA) on such remunerations. FIFA even introduced exams, they spied this on us. The FHR is right in that there are «bug agents» “We won’t reach it, our sanctions are meaningless to them, they need government influence,” Roagchev said.
The head of the State Duma Committee on Physical Culture and Sports, Dmitry Svishchev, called for the creation of a working group to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. “This is not an easy question. Let’s gather a working group, invite clubs, leagues, federations. And we will resolve this issue as soon as possible,” said Svishchev.