Ten Hag accused of favoring his son's football agency
Reading Time: 2min | Tue. 19.09.23. | 19:30
Nigel Ten Hag is working for SEG as an analyst and they are heavily involved in Manchester's dealings
When results are not good, everything is wrong. The mood in the locker room, the mood in the executive box… crisis meetings are taking place, and all things are being revised. So, after the domestic violence affairs with Greenwood and Antony, after the uncertainty over a potential club sale, and especially after three league defeats in five rounds of the Premier League, Erik ten Hag is now under fire. But, what is more interesting is that he is not criticized for the bad displays of his players on the pitch but for the football agency he is working with.
According to Daily Mail, the club staff have expressed concerns about the growing involvement of Erik ten Hag's agent Kees Vos in transfer activity at Old Trafford. Sports Entertainment Group have become the go-to agency in negotiating player signings and sales for United, as well as providing informal advice on the transfer market. What is more annoying to the Manchester staff is that Ten Hag’s son Nigel works over there as an analyst, so they feel the Dutchman is personally involved and that the agency has too much influence at Old Trafford because of that. So far, the Holland-based agency has been involved in Rasmus Hojlund’s 72 million pounds transfer from Atalanta (the Norwegian signed for them one month before his transfer) and was the club’s representative in a deal to bring in Sofyan Amrabat from Fiorentina (10 million loans, with an option to buy).
Sports Entertainment Group is playing it smartly since, apart from Nigel, they also hired Pep Guardiola’s brother Pere, who brought them the Spanish tactician as a client. All in all, they have 600 athletes on their books and made around 300 transfers in the recently closed transfer window. They claim that dealing with United is only one per cent of all their transfers, and they were not involved in Harry Maguire’s negotiations with West Ham. But United staff also think that Ten Hag is bringing too many of his former players to Old Trafford, stating that current players Onana, Antony, Amrabat and Lisandro Martinez all played for the Dutch tactician either in Ajax or Utrecht.
