The Football Agent System

(Garcia POV)

Garcia was three tabs deep into G11’s unpaid expenses when the email arrived.

Jamie’s updated Tranmere schedule sat open on the left of the screen, printed already and clipped to the folder that never seemed to close for long these days. Jay’s Week Three update from Egersund sat unread beside it, still bold in the inbox.

Between the two, a spreadsheet of numbers Garcia had been avoiding since Norway had chewed through most of what was left of the family’s patience.

The sender address stopped his hand on the trackpad.

[email protected].

He did not open it straight away.

An unfamiliar Dutch domain landing in his inbox two weeks after Jay flew out was exactly the kind of thing that had ended careers before his, agents who got flattered by a name in an email header and gave away a player’s whole file before checking whether the sender actually worked where they said they did.

He looked the club up properly first. Go Ahead Eagles, Eredivisie, based in Deventer, a real club with a real recruitment department and a real switchboard number.

He called it, asked for recruitment, and got passed through to a man who introduced himself as Bram Kessels before Garcia had said more than his own name.

Bram’s English was clean and businesslike, the tone of a man used to making calls exactly like this one.

He explained that Go Ahead’s Scandinavian scout, a man named Joost Brummelkamp, had travelled to Egersund the previous week to assess a striker already on the club’s shortlist. During that visit, Joost had also watched an English winger training with the same group, and had submitted a separate report recommending the club look into him properly.

Bram was careful about what he actually asked for.

Was Jay under contract anywhere, or genuinely unattached. Did G11 hold the authority to represent him. Did Egersund hold any option, first-refusal clause, or exclusivity agreement over him. How long the current evaluation ran. What his recent playing history looked like. His age, nationality, position. Whether reliable footage and references existed.

Nothing about wages. Nothing about a contract length or where he might slot into a squad.

This was a club checking whether a door was worth knocking on, not a club standing on the other side of it with an offer in hand.

Garcia told him he’d need to check his own paperwork before confirming anything, and Bram said that was expected, and gave him a direct line to call back on.

He hung up and went straight to the file cabinet in his head before he touched the physical one.

Jay’s representation agreement first. Then the full Egersund evaluation paperwork, the FIFA Trial Form Garcia had read three times before signing it in October, and every page attached to it since.

Egersund had invited Jay to be assessed. They had not signed him, had not registered him anywhere, had made no formal offer of any kind.

The trial form covered exactly what a trial form was supposed to cover, travel, accommodation, meals, basic expenses, nothing that made Jay an employee or a registered player of the club.

At twenty-one, he sat comfortably inside the rules that allowed a trialist his age up to eight weeks with one club in a season, training and friendlies permitted, competitive football not. There was no option clause anywhere in the stack. No exclusivity. Nothing that stopped Jay from talking to anyone else on earth.

Garcia read it all a second time anyway, because a mistake here would not be the kind fixed with an apology.

Only then did he start building the response, and he built it factual, because oversell was the fastest way to make a Eredivisie recruitment department stop returning his calls.

Jay had spent the previous two seasons playing senior semi-professional football for Southmere Athletic. His registration there had ended in August, not because anyone released him for poor form, but because the arrangement, football stacked on top of café shifts and everything at home, had stopped being sustainable.

He had recent senior match experience, not a gap of years. He had never played full-time professional football in his life. Egersund was his first genuine first-team evaluation since Southmere, not his first football since some vague point in the past.

Garcia underlined that distinction in his own notes before he wrote a word to Bram.

Whatever Go Ahead thought they were looking at, it was not a player who had disappeared from the game and reappeared out of nowhere. It was a recently active semi-professional who had adapted to full-time training faster than anyone had a right to expect.

He called Jay before he sent anything.

He kept it plain. A Dutch club had made a formal enquiry after their scout saw him play in the controlled match. There was no offer, nothing close to one yet, and nothing about how Jay trained or behaved at Egersund needed to change because of a phone call Garcia had taken in his bedroom.

Jay’s first question wasn’t about the Dutch club at all.

He wanted to know if Egersund knew. He said it carefully, like the answer mattered more than anything Garcia had actually called about, because he’d spent three weeks building something with the players there, and it felt wrong that someone might have been watching him behind their backs while they’d been the ones to give him the chance nobody else had.

Garcia told him there was nothing improper in any of it. Go Ahead had approached G11 because Jay was unattached and represented, which was exactly what being unattached and represented meant.

But there was also nothing to tell Egersund yet, because a vague enquiry from another club was not information, it was noise, and announcing noise could do more damage than staying quiet.

Jay went quiet himself for a moment, then agreed to let Garcia send his football records and basic availability. He drew the line at anything medical.

If Go Ahead needed that, they’d need to ask properly, through the right consent, not have it handed over because a scout had liked what he’d seen from the stands.

Garcia respected that line without needing it explained twice.

He sent Bram a tight package that afternoon. A signed confirmation of G11’s representation. Proof of Jay’s unattached status. His Southmere playing history. Confirmation that his registration there had ended in August.

A short profile of his position and the role he played best. The original footage Garcia had used to secure the Egersund evaluation in the first place. Rafi’s fitness-readiness summary from the summer.

The dates of the Egersund trial, start to finish. Written confirmation that Egersund held no contractual option over him. Garcia’s own contact details, direct.

No passport scan. No hospital details, no family circumstances, nothing that belonged to Jay and not to a football club’s due diligence. If Go Ahead wanted more than that, they could ask for it properly, the same way Egersund had.

Go Ahead’s answer came back within two days, in writing this time, and it read like a club taking the enquiry seriously without committing to anything.

They wanted the full footage from the controlled match, not edited highlights, and longer clips showing Jay off the ball as much as on it. Southmere’s appearance record and a proper football reference. A clear explanation of why his registration there had ended.

Recent physical-testing data, if Jay would authorise Egersund or Rafi to release it. Permission for a senior recruitment employee to conduct a second assessment in person. A meeting with Garcia to talk through Jay’s availability and what he actually wanted from his career.

And, quietly folded in near the bottom, whether a January move would even be administratively possible.

Garcia rang Southmere the next morning, with Jay’s blessing already given.

Southmere’s manager, a plain-spoken man named Gary Fenwick who’d clearly fielded stranger calls than this one, gave him exactly what he needed without turning it into anything sentimental.