Radio Days – The Superagent – BBC Radio 5 Live

06 Mar Radio Days – The Superagent – BBC Radio 5 Live

I loved being an investigative journalist and this report for BBC Radio 5’s Sport on Five programme typifies some of the skills I believe matters most in this kind of reportage – how to throw light not heat on a specific subject.

It features football’s at the time so-called super agent – Pini Zahavi – a man whose career went far beyond  representing footballers to being a major deal maker.

At the time of this programme (2005) Zahavi had recently helped Roman Abramovich acquire Chelsea FC and so to spark the huge subsequent spending spree that enabled Chelsea to sign some of the world’s best footballers.

In carefully piecing together Zahavi’s meteoric rise from small time Israeli sports journalist to one of the most powerful men in world football, I felt it was crucial not to paint him as some sort of latter-day folk devil but to highlight the attributes – his skill, character and determination – that got him to where he was and to peel back some of the layers of the world he swam in.

Interviewees include fellow football agents, author Tom Bower, the late MP and Chelsea fan Tony Banks (concerned at the time of something we’d later get to know as Londongrad) and Jack Mansell, an English coach who managed the Israeli national team.

Oh, and Chelsea fans who were blissfully unaware of this key figure who would ultimately help bring back-to-back Premier League titles and the Champions League to Stamford Bridge.

The subsequent discussion includes some fascinating insights from ex-England and (at the time recent) Aston Villa manager Graham Taylor, also sadly no longer with us.

You can listen to The Superagent via the CGM podcast – https://tinyurl.com/yc2jf26a