Player advisor Arthur Beck jumps to the side of ailing Ajax sporting director Sven Mislintat in the Sosa deal affair. But many questions still remain.
How did Borna Sosa’s transfer from VfB Stuttgart to Ajax Amsterdam really go down? The two clubs concerned are now dealing with this thorny question. Ajax, where sporting director Sven Mislintat is accused of a conflict of interest in the matter. And VfB, who confirmed on Wednesday evening that they wanted to look into the transfer activities concerned “for a given reason”. It sounds as if those responsible for the Swabians are looking at all the player commitments made by Mislintat, the sporting director in office between April 2019 and December 2022, in which the consultancy agency AKA Global GmbH was involved.
The accusation from the Netherlands: AKA, like Mislintat, is now involved in the analysis company Matchmetrics GmbH, which the 50-year-old himself co-founded. In addition, there is the suspicion that Mislintat wanted to go through with the Sosa deal at all costs with the consultant Arthur Beck, co-owner of AKA Global. Both are presumed innocent. Beck has so far not responded to a request for an interview, Mislintat does not want to comment officially until the investigation is completed.
In an interview with “Voetbal International” (“VI”), however, the agent now defends Mislintat: “That the transfer could only have come about with me as a consultant is the biggest nonsense I’ve ever heard.” According to Dutch paper “De Telegraaf”, however, this is said to have emerged from a WhatsApp conversation between Sosa and consultant Thies Bliemeister of the Stellar Group, which previously represented the Croatian.
Didn’t Mislintat push for the Sosa signing at all?
Beck spoke to “VI” of conjecture: “I have known Borna for a long time and was one of several agents who worked for him. I was allowed to speak to several clubs on the player’s behalf, including Ajax. A few weeks before, I offered him to Ajax. I pointed out that there were several possibilities and that if Sven wanted him, things had to be done quickly.” The brother of former Germany international Andreas Beck explained that Ajax coach Maurice Stejn had pushed for the roughly eight million euro Sosa signing on the last day of the transfer period and not Mislintat. “It is a lie that I received a mandate from Ajax for the transfers of Eduard Spertsyan and Borna Sosa. Not from Ajax and not from Sven either.”
Mandates from clubs to consultants to initiate transfers are nothing unusual in the industry. Whereby the question generally arises as to why highly paid club officials usually use the help of third parties for transfers. In the case of Sosa, there is also the special constellation that Mislintat had previously worked in Stuttgart for a long time and that an intermediary should be superfluous due to the existing contacts. So the way Beck presents it, the mandate must have come from Sosa himself. However, nothing is known about a previous cooperation between his agency and Sosa. Neither does the left-back appear on the company’s Instagram profile, where agencies like to adorn themselves with their stars. Nor did AKA accompany his 2018 move to VfB. This deal was handled by Mario Mamic and Marco De Cia.
There are growing signs that Mislintat is unlikely to have a prosperous future at the Dutch record champions, despite Beck’s defensive speech. “De Telegraaf” reports of a supervisory board meeting on Wednesday evening at which members of the supervisory body are said to have demanded a suspension. A majority for this measure was apparently not found. But council chairman Pier Eringa said Mislintat should no longer sit in the stands for the time being. This Thursday evening Ajax host Olympique Marseille in the Europa League
Accusations about failed Pieper deal
In any case, Mislintat is relieved by an obvious interpretation of the events, which is confirmed by at least one source from the club environment: The affair with AKA was intended to be used for the quickest possible separation after the disastrous start to the season. Moreover, at first glance, no excessive accumulation of deals with the named agency can be detected during his Stuttgart tenure. Only contracts or transfers with professionals such as Waldemar Anton, Orel Mangala, Darko Churlinov and a few young players are affected. In addition, there are transactions with three professionals from another agency that works closely with Beck’s company. For the length of Mislintat’s tenure in Stuttgart, which lasted three and a half years, this is nothing out of the ordinary by industry standards.
On the other hand, there have been accusations from other player advisors such as Volker Struth, who, in a book on the Amos Pieper personnel case, accuses Mislintat of acting in a similar way to what is now being done with Sosa from the Netherlands: Namely, that the 50-year-old had wanted to go through with the defender’s transfer to VfB, scheduled for the summer of 2022, with another advisor. Struth informed Stuttgart about this at the time, he writes – although the question arises as to whether the Bundesliga club should not have initiated an investigation. Pieper, still a client of Struth, ended up at Werder Bremen at the time.
