Fifty-six people passed the FIFA player agent system test, which was revived after 8 years, and they were able to realize their dream of becoming ‘Korea’s Jorge Mendes’. Mendes is the super agent who raised Cristiano Ronaldo to be a star.
According to the Korea Football Association on the 4th, 132 out of 177 applicants took the agent test conducted at a hotel in Seoul in mid-April, and 56, or about 42.4%, passed. That’s 2 out of 5 people. The online test, which lasted 60 minutes, consisted of 20 multiple-choice multiple-choice questions.
It was found that the pass rate for the domestic agent test was slightly below the global pass rate announced by the International Football Federation (FIFA). FIFA announced that out of 3,800 applicants, 1,962, or 52%, passed. On the field, the test questions were presented in English, which caused language limitations, and it was difficult to answer questions about the Code of Ethics in addition to FIFA regulations.
Compared to 2007, when only 1 out of 149 applicants passed, the acceptance rate is quite high. However, there is a possibility that the actual number of registered agents is less than 56. Those who pass the test must pay an annual fee of 600 dollars (about 800,000 won) to FIFA before September 30 to be officially registered. Only those who have paid the annual fee are eligible for official agent activity from October 1st. Officially registered agents will begin their full-fledged activities from October, after the K-League summer transfer window.
The FIFA agent system was revived this year, approximately 8 years after it was abolished in April 2015. The test is only 9 years since 2014. FIFA found in 2015 that only around 25-30% of all contracts (transfers) were managed by accredited agents. For this reason, the ‘intermediary system’ was introduced to grant freedom according to the circumstances of each country. However, it has been evaluated that the problems of the existing system, such as backside contracts and high brokerage fees, have not been resolved over the past eight years. In the ‘intermediary system’, anyone who is ‘a person over the age of 19 and has no criminal record and is not in the soccer industry’ could register. The barrier to entry was lower than that of the FIFA agent system, which had the condition of ‘passing the FIFA agent test and holding a lawyer’s license’. Agent fees skyrocketed along with the number of brokers. Global agent fees have quadrupled between 2015 and 2019. 스포츠토토
FIFA eventually admitted the failure of the ‘intermediary system’. After lengthy discussions over the past two years, a new agent system was created under the banner of transparency and fairness, including reintroduction of the test system, introduction of a fee upper limit, and change in agent-player contract period. That’s how the agent test was retaken after 9 years. An agent (representative, intermediary) acts as a negotiator on behalf of a player or club when concluding an employment contract between a player and a club, or a player transfer agreement between two clubs. Existing license holders will maintain their qualifications without having to retake the exam. As of April 2022, only 209 agents were registered in Korea. The second exam this year will be held on September 20th.