Apparently even Zidane wasn't good enough

I often recall the story of agent Barry Silkman when he offered Newcastle United, Zinedine Zidane for around £1.2m in 1996 but he was rebuffed by the club saying he was not good enough for the Division 1 (equivalent now of the Championship) - all this before he went onto become one of the world's best ever players.

I even recall my first year as an agent in 2008-2009 where I brought a spanish youth winger to trial for a small club where I was told he was good and would be a top player - but not in England. He went on to sign for Real Madrid.

Zidane: Not good enough for the Championship??

The stories are frequent and my own experiences of such are often. I experienced the same again in this transfer window. I worked with an agent representing a 20-something talented attacker in Spain, I offered him to one of the newly promoted Premier League teams only to be told he wasn't good enough for them. A month later he went on to sign for a top 4 La Liga side and is doing extremely well for them.

I have to say the transfer window is one of the most fascinating times for me as an agent just because you can see just how differently people/clubs view players.

I also think the amount you hear about how expansive scouting networks are and the diligence involved in transfer target identification in modern football is wildly over-exaggerated. You'd be surprised how even some Premier League clubs still have little information on players even in leagues like Spain or Germany beyond the chief scout or manager calling a friend there for an opinion, watching videos, listening to an agent or using statistics to make an assessment.

Even if a club has an expansive scouting network it can mean little more than a lot of scouts adding info to a database remotely with little quality assurance or direct influence at the highest level. Look out for a future blog where I will go into more depth about the realities of player identification within clubs...