Player consultants have gained significantly more influence in the football business in recent years. Bayern’s honorary president Uli Hoeneß is not a fan of this development and criticises the media games played by agents in particular.
At FC Bayern, internal cabin details are repeatedly leaked to the public. In March 2023, the „mole affair“ caused a lot of unrest at the German record champions when a lot of insider information was leaked to the media surrounding the dismissal of Julian Nagelsmann. It is still not known who is responsible for this.
Uli Hoeneß has now voiced a concrete suspicion as to how such explosive internal information becomes public. In an interview with BR, the 72-year-old criticised the players‘ advisors in particular: „The power of the players is more important now because more things are leaking out of the dressing room. In the past, every player fought for himself. Now every player has an agent, and agents fight for their players. Unfortunately, a lot of agents have deals with journalists these days.“
„True or false no longer matters“
According to Hoeneß, there is a real trade in insider information: „They leak information in order to get a good rating for their clients in return. It used to be about the question: ‚Is this information true or false?‘ Now it’s about who’s first. True or false no longer plays a role,“ says Bayern’s Supervisory Board.
Hoeneß thus accuses the players‘ advisors of accepting to harm the club in order to influence the public image of their own clients. According to this, they give internal information to the media in order to influence reporting. The power of the agents, which they gain through public appearances, also disturbs the honorary president of the German record champions.
Hoeneß‘ suspicions cannot be completely dismissed. Only recently, Danish first division club FC Copenhagen confirmed that they had been offered the opportunity to report transfer news via the X account of well-known transfer journalist Fabrizio Romano in order to gain publicity.
