Defence
Defenders of the practice said that it constitutes a way of sharing the burden of investment in a player. The 'super agent' Pini Zahavi, himself associated with third-party ownership and the companies that invested in players, said: "In England they don't understand it at all. It's easier to buy a player who you are unsure about for £10m if you are sharing the risk with a partner. Now, if the player becomes top-drawer and is sold for £30m, then of course you may feel stupid only to own half. But if the player turns out to be merely average or a failure, if he cannot even be sold, you will say, 'Fantastic, the disaster was not only mine'. That's exactly the way it works."
The businessman Kia Joorabchian, heavily involved in the third-party ownership of players, defended the arrangement, calling it "the South American model and a model that appears all over Europe". In his view third-party transfers are "a way of bringing outstanding players to clubs that would not be able to afford them ordinarily. So they increase the competition", further explaining: "What happens, in Brazil particularly, clubs cannot afford to buy a player. So they go to a business, a bank, a major supermarket, an individual, a person, a wealthy individual and say: 'We want Mr X. You put up 70, 80, 100 per cent of the money, let him play here.' It is a little bit like a loan deal between two clubs, except it is a loan deal between the club and a third party".
After the Premiership introduced rules against third-party ownership, lawyer Jean-Louis Dupont claimed that it was illegal.
Read more about this topic: Third-party Ownership In Association Football
Famous quotes containing the word defence:
“Sow seed—but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth—let no imposter heap;
Weave robes—let not the idle wear;
Forge arms—in your defence to bear.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“What cannot stand must fall; and the measure of our sincerity and therefore of the respect of men, is the amount of health and wealth we will hazard in the defence of our right. An old farmer, my neighbor across the fence, when I ask him if he is not going to town-meeting, says: “No, ‘t is no use balloting, for it will not stay; but what you do with the gun will stay so.””
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Behold now this vast city; a city of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with his protection; the shop of war hath not there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and hands there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)