Wolves’ link to super-agent Jorge Mendes looks to be finally paying off – but will Uefa buzzkills spoil the party?
Anyone wanting football to be less predictable would agree Wolves are adding to the gaiety of the nation in their cup run
AS a former nightclub owner, the super-agent Jorge Mendes would have recognised the scene.
Unrestrained revelry, pumping music and a Saturday-night packed house.
Except, the setting was Molineux – the Black Country’s capital of footballing misery for much of the past 60 years – transformed into an old-gold utopia after Wolves had ditched Manchester United from the FA Cup to book a Wembley semi-final.
Seven sets of car keys were discovered scattered around the terraces, due to wild celebrations rather than retro wife-swapping shenanigans.
You’d have needed a steel heart, or a love of West Brom, not to have appreciated the joy.
With Wolves having already proved themselves the best newly-promoted team in a generation, here was a grand club restored to former glories and perhaps soon ready to gatecrash the big six.
Anyone wanting football to be less predictable would agree that Wolves are adding to the gaiety of the nation.
WOLVES’ EURO DASH
And while we’d love to see such success funded by a local butcher, baker or candlestick maker; these days, it generally takes foreign billionaires.
Not that filthy-rich ownership is a guarantee of success. All four major west midlands clubs were bought by wealthy Chinese owners in recent years – yet while Aston Villa, West Brom and Birmingham bombed, only Wolves advanced.
It helped that Wolves’ bankrollers, the Chinese conglomerate Fosun, were shrewd enough to enlist Mendes – long-standing agent of head coach Nuno Espirito Santo as well as key players like Ruben Neves, Joao Moutinho and Rui Patricio.
Wolves now have two chances of qualifying for Europe, by winning the Cup or finishing seventh.
Then, however, they would be at the mercy of Uefa’s killjoy blazers, hell-bent on sustaining football’s status quo through so-called “Financial Fair Play” to restrict loss-making sugar daddies.
They’ll be scouring rulebooks for ways in which to stop Wolves – and the club’s close ties with Mendes could feature heavily.
Fosun hold a 20 per cent stake in Mendes’s agency Gestifute, a situation which caused controversy in the Championship last season.
Ironically, it was Leeds United – football’s M16 – who complained to the EFL, with suspicions that Wolves were not paying the market rate in transfer fees or wages for Mendes players.
But Mendes holds no official role at Molineux and the EFL found no rules had been broken regarding the influence of agents.
Uefa will be sticking their noses in soon, though. Football’s governing bodies, often riddled with corruption themselves, tend to go for successful owners rather than rank bad ones.
Some of this work is worthy. If Manchester City, like Chelsea, have broken rules on signing under-18 players, they will deserve a Fifa transfer ban.
But as for allegations that City dodged FFP, it’s hard to get too sniffy about breaking rules designed to rope off an old-money elite.
Will Wolves avoid such “fair play” traps? Some rival clubs believe they’ll face further battles.
For all talk of “financial doping” in football, though, wealthy owners often fail – even if they forge links with agents.
Blackburn’s Indian chicken moguls Venky’s leant heavily on agent Jerome Anderson, appointed his pal Steve Kean as manager, offered a playing contract to Anderson’s son Myles and soon plummeted from the Premier League to League One.
Then there’s Fulham – who, like Wolves, were promoted last summer to much fanfare.
With a fortune of £5.8billion, their American billionaire owner Shahid Khan is rated the Premier League’s third wealthiest owner.
Yet while Wolves take advice from the impeccably-connected Mendes, Khan allows his own son Tony to run his club’s recruitment to disastrous effect – and Fulham will be relegated before Easter despite spaffing £100million last summer.
That’s one problem with billionaires. They’re often nepotists.
Unlike the owners of City and Chelsea, Khan senior is a self-made man of transparent means, having patented a car bumper now standard throughout the US motor industry. But he’s pretty hopeless at running a football club.
So in the game’s moral maze is he a fit and proper owner?
And what does financial fair play even mean either? Unless we tear down the entire capitalist system, there’s not much “fairness”, inside or outside football.
Wolves’s owners have done a damned good job and the club’s loyal supporters deserve to enjoy their success. Even if a few of them had to thumb a lift home on Saturday night.
NOT VAR-D TO SEE THE PROBLEM
SWANSEA were clearly robbed in their FA Cup defeat by Manchester City – Sergio Aguero’s winner was offside and the equalising penalty awarded to Raheem Sterling was iffy at best.
But I’m not having the suggestion that the Swans were especially hard done-by because VAR was in action for cup ties played at Premier League stadia and not at Football League grounds.
The idea that there could and should be consistency in refereeing is one of football’s greatest myths.
For instance, after 22 Premier League matches apiece this season, Jon Moss has awarded fouls for 72 per cent of tackles, while Andre Marriner blew up for just 48 per cent.
Moss awards 0.41 penalties per match, while Marriner gives them at a rate of 0.14.
Two refs with entirely different interpretations of what is or isn’t a foul, what is or isn’t a penalty, refereeing entirely differently.
The difference between having VAR or not having VAR is less important than the difference between having liberal Marriner or fusspot Moss.
Oh and if Premier League managers aren’t telling players to go down easily when Moss is in charge and to stay on their feet when it’s Marriner then they’re missing a valuable trick.
STEIN FOR A CHANGE
CHELSEA haven’t scored a single away goal against a serious Premier League team in 2016 – drawing blanks in defeats at Tottenham, Arsenal, Bournemouth, Man City and Everton, while netting only at parody club Fulham.
Yet Maurizio Sarri’s only answer is more of the same possession-for-possession’s-sake football.
As an intellectual theorist, Sarri will doubtless be aware of Albert Einstein, who once defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result”.
Although, to be fair, Einstein never did manage against Fulham.
DRESS TO IMPRESS
LEICESTER’S James Maddison knew he’d be booked for revealing a T-shirt tribute to a young cancer victim after scoring at Burnley.
At the other end of the seriousness spectrum, Pierre Emerick Aubameyang knew he’d be yellow-carded for wearing a Black Panther mask after his Europa League goal against Rennes.
But what harm was either player possibly doing? In a low-scoring sport why shouldn’t players celebrate however the hell they like? Within a one-minute time limit, just throw it open.
Tributes, political protests, masks, full-on Widow Twankey fancy-dress costumes if you like.
REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL
1. REAL BETIS fans singing Lionel Messi’s name and giving him a standing ovation after Barcelona’s genius scored a wonderful hat-trick against their team.
A shared love of a beautiful game trumping rabid tribalism.
2. BRYONY FROST lighting up the Cheltenham Festival by winning the Ryanair Chase on Frodon.
A brilliant jockey, a brilliant communicator, a brilliant ambassador for racing and for all sportswomen.
3. LUTON defender Sonny Bradley staging an hilarious spoof over-reaction to a push from titchy Bradford striker Lewis O’Brien – ridiculing top-flight cheats as he did so.
No surprise that he’s managed by hard-assed Mick Harford.
NOT ED STRONG
AFTER four Six Nations campaigns with England, Eddie Jones still blames the previous regime for the mental frailty which led to Saturday’s stunning capitulation against Scotland.
If his players could pass a rugby ball as assuredly as Jones passes the buck, England would be World Cup winners this autumn.