The Football Agent System

(Garcia POV)

The video call opened with three faces instead of one, and that told Garcia something before anyone had said a word.

Peter Doevendans sat centre frame, Go Ahead Eagles’ head of recruitment, calm in the unhurried way Garcia remembered from their first phone call. Beside him sat Joost Brummelkamp, the scout whose name had started all of this without Jay ever knowing he was being watched.

"We’ve been through everything you sent," Peter said. "The controlled-match footage. Joost’s live report. The two seasons at Southmere. The August release."

He glanced down at something off-screen.

"The fitness report from your man Rafi. Three weeks of updates coming out of Egersund. And the confirmation he’s a free agent, represented by you." He looked back up. "That’s a complete picture. It doesn’t happen often that a picture that complete lands on a player nobody in this building had heard of a month ago."

"And now that you’ve got it?" Garcia asked.

"Now he’s not a name in a scout’s report anymore." Peter didn’t dress it up. "Our recruitment group sees him as a real January option. I want to be honest with you about what that means, because I’d rather you hear it flat than pretty. Not a guaranteed starter. Someone who comes in and competes properly for a wide role."

Garcia let that sit a second before he answered. Realistic was better than flattering, and Peter clearly knew it.

"I’d have trusted you less if you’d said anything else," Garcia said.

Peter almost smiled at that, then moved into his questions, one at a time, the way a man did when he’d actually prepared for the call instead of winging it.

"Left, or either flank?"

"Left’s his home. He’s played the right, and he’s not lost there. But left."

"Family situation. Only what you’re comfortable sharing."

"His mother’s unwell. He’s close to her." Garcia kept it there. "It matters to him. It won’t stop him moving. That’s as far into it as I’ll go on his behalf today."

Peter nodded and didn’t push. "Wage expectations?"

"He’s a free agent who’s never been full-time professional. He knows that. Nobody on my side is walking in with silly numbers."

"Relocation. January, no hesitation?"

"None."

"And Egersund." Peter’s tone didn’t change, but the question sharpened all the same. "Have they put anything formal in front of him yet?"

Garcia had known that one was coming.

"They’re preparing to talk about his future," he said. "Nothing’s been offered. And I’m not going to invent an offer that hasn’t arrived just to speed this up for either of us."

"Good," Peter said, and meant it.

Then Garcia turned it around, because vague enthusiasm from a Eredivisie club was worth nothing without shape behind it.

"My turn," he said. "How do you actually see him fitting? And I don’t mean the compliment. I mean the squad."

"Wide attacker, second in the pecking order to start, pushing the man ahead of him," Peter said. "Full first-team training from day one. No development-tier holding pen."

"No loan hiding in the small print?"

"No loan. If we take him, we take him to work with, not to park somewhere and forget."

"What else do you need before you’d write anything down?"

"A conversation with him. Not another trial." Peter shook his head at the word. "Joost has watched him live. We’ve got the footage and the references. Another month in Norway tells us nothing. We want to hear how he talks about the move. His character, what he expects from a career. Whether he understands what he’d be walking into."

"And your legal side," Garcia said. "British passport. Be straight with me — is a January registration actually possible, or are we all wasting an evening?"

Joost shifted slightly, and it was Peter who answered.

"It’s not a signature and done, not for a non-EU player," Peter said. "I won’t pretend otherwise. But our people have found a route — the newer pathway for young foreign free agents joining top-flight clubs. It’s built for exactly this. It still needs work authorisation, a medical, full international registration, and it still has to land inside the January window. But nothing they’ve found so far kills it."

Garcia didn’t ask him to read out the regulation. He asked the only thing that mattered.

"Timeline."

"Coach and technical director have to approve the sporting recommendation before we can issue terms," Peter said. "I expect that within a few days. If it comes back the way I think it will, written terms follow quickly after."

"Then that’s where we are," Garcia said. "Interest. Not an offer."

"Not yet," Peter agreed, and the call ended there, formal and clean, with nothing on paper.

Garcia barely had time to eat before Egersund’s Week Three meeting opened on a different screen — Jay in the room in person this time, Garcia dialled in from his bedroom with the volume turned up.

Egersund had stopped talking in maybes.

Kjetil led it, Espen beside him, and Vidar Aune, the club’s finance man, sitting slightly apart with a folder already open in front of him.

"I’ll be plain, because I think we’ve earned plain by now," Kjetil said. "He’s adapted faster than anyone here expected. Not fast enough to survive — fast enough that he understands what we do. Properly."

He looked to Espen, who leaned into the camera.

"Three weeks," Espen said. "Three weeks and his level hasn’t dipped once. Not one good fortnight surrounded by ordinary ones. And the players have taken him in, which for us matters more than people outside a club like this understand."

"We think he strengthens the group we’re building for next season," Kjetil said. "So I’ll say the rest of it out loud. We want to cancel the fourth week. And we’re ready to offer him a professional contract, starting in January."

Vidar turned his folder so the camera could catch it.

"Two years," he said. "Club option on a third. First-team squad status from day one — not a tier below it. Accommodation support through the first months while he settles. Appearance and performance bonuses on top of the base." He didn’t read the base figure aloud. "January start, conditional on the medical, the work permission, and registration once the window opens."

It was real. Garcia had read enough contracts to know the difference between a club testing the water and a club that had already decided.

He let a beat pass. Then he said the thing that had to be said.

"Before Jay reacts to any of this, I owe you something," Garcia said. "Another European club, one playing at a considerably higher level than this, has opened a formal assessment of him in the last two weeks."

The room went quiet on the other end.