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| The alleged sums of the deal that took Paul Pogba from Juventus to Manchester United last summer have surprised many in football. Photograph: Juan Manuel Serrano Arce/Getty Images |
Fifa has confirmed that its Transfer Matching System, to which
details of payments in all international transfers are sent, has
“requested information” on Paul Pogba’s world record £89.3m move from
Juventus to Manchester United last summer.
The announcement follows allegations based on leaked documents that Pogba’s agent, Mino Raiola, was paid a total of €49m (£41.3m) for his part in the move: €27m by Juventus from a mandate to sell the player, as well as €19.4m by United on a contract to secure the midfielder’s signing, and €2.6m by United on behalf of Pogba for negotiating his wage package.
It is not yet clear what the basis of any investigation would be. An agent is permitted in certain circumstances to represent all three sides in a football transfer although, if true, the assertion that Raiola was paid that amount for the deal will astonish world football. None of the individuals was available for comment although United issued a statement which read: “We do not comment on individual contracts. Fifa have had the documents since the transfer was concluded in August.”
Fifa, meanwhile, is facing renewed fierce criticism of its trustworthiness and commitment to reform after it announced that the chairmen of both arms of its ethics committee are to be suddenly replaced.
The Swiss lawyer Cornel Borbély, who has headed multiple ethics committee investigations in recent years – including of the previous Fifa president, Sepp Blatter – and the former German Judge Hans-Joachim Eckert, chair of the committee’s adjudicatory chamber‚ which decides on sanctions and bans, met the news of their dismissal with a strong statement arguing that it represents “de facto the end of Fifa’s reform efforts”.
Eckert and Borbély said in their statement that the non-renewal of their terms of office, which have expired, will set back the ethics committee’s work after years of dealing with scandal. “It appears that the heads of Fifa have attached greater weight to their own and political interests, than to the long-term interests of Fifa,” they said. “They have accepted jeopardising Fifa’s integrity and, hence, the future of the game.”
The two nominees proposed to replace them are Maria Claudia Rojas, former president of the council of state in Colombia, to chair the ethics committee’s investigatory chamber and Vassilios Skouris, the former president of the European court of justice.
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