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
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