Juraj Venglos: “Why I went silent...”

FIFA football agent Juraj Venglos also on relations between agents and the Slovak Football Association
Juraj Venglos: “Why I went silent...”

How does the partnership between agents and the Slovak Football Association work?
“Almost not at all. There’s no cooperation with the association, it doesn’t provide us with any service.”

What kind of service do you mean?
“Abroad it’s normal that agents receive FIFA materials, distributed through the associations. For me, it’s a problem to even get a VIP ticket for a national team match in which I have ten players in the squad, with the argument that there are supposedly more important people for that.”

From the SFZ point of view, maybe you’re not important enough, which is understandable. By the way, a VIP ticket can be purchased.
“I’m not claiming I’m important, I just used it as one example of mutual contact. You’re right, I also buy VIP tickets for myself and my partners. But the essence is not whether I have the money for it, but how much respect a football agent has in the eyes of the association. If I ask for a ticket to the England – Slovakia match at Wembley, I get it without a problem, in fact that’s how it is everywhere abroad, only in Slovakia it doesn’t work.”

Maybe it just needs to be clarified in a meeting with SFZ representatives.
“We already had one, initiated by me and my colleague Jozef Tokos, but it brought nothing. We feel that the association merely tolerates us. FIFA ordered that agents must be present when signing a contract of a player they represent, yet here there were absurd proposals that we should pay for the players with whom we sign cooperation. That’s a completely opposite perspective. Abroad, it usually works in such a way that the association has a dedicated person for relations with agents, who manages the entire agenda, contacts, communication. Here, you would search for such a functionary within SFZ in vain.”