The conversations floated through the waiting area like they were nothing. Like they were weather.
We were in a conference center, waiting to take the FIFA Agent licensing exam. The kind of generic space with corporate carpet and fluorescent lighting that could be anywhere. And all around me, prospective agents were talking shop.
"Yeah, I brought him over for trials. 15, maybe 16. Decent technical ability, but he's not going to cut it at this level. I'm going to dump him. Already got my eye on someone else—better upside, easier sell."
From another corner: "The trial didn't go well. Kid failed. You can't hold onto them too long if they're not producing. Move on, find the next one."
Someone else laughed. "It's a numbers game, right? You've got to churn through to find the ones worth keeping."
Brought him over for trials. Kid failed. Dump him. Move on. Churn through. The ones worth keeping.
I sat there listening, and something settled in my chest. Not anger, exactly. More like recognition. This was the language of inventory management. Of commodities trading. These were people discussing children—15, 16-year-old human beings they'd brought overseas for trials—like products that hadn't performed well enough to keep stocking.
The casual math of it. The complete absence of any acknowledgment of what it meant to bring a kid across the world, watch him fail to meet someone's threshold, and then discard him. That being abandoned after that kind of hope, that kind of risk, might be devastating. That there was an emotional reality to this transaction that didn't seem to register at all.
No one was whispering. This was just... normal. How things were done.
I failed that exam by one point.
And I didn't take it again for three years.
I didn't run away from athlete representation. I went back to what I'd been doing since 2017, when I started We Are Privateers.
I worked with amateur and Olympic-level athletes across multiple sports. Different countries, different cultures, different contexts. I helped athletes navigate nationality transfers when they found themselves in impossible situations—abusive coaching environments, federation politics, the kind of institutional dysfunction that has no place in sport but exists anyway. I helped them understand anti-doping regulations, career planning, the complex machinery of international sport that can crush you if you don't know how it works.
I built We Are Privateers around a different philosophy. I called myself an Athlete Support Person—an ASP—because I couldn't stomach the word "agent." The connotation, the association, the whole framework of what that word implied.
Agents are gatekeepers. Agents control information. Agents maintain dependency because if the athlete knows as much as you do, what do they need you for?
I wanted to do the opposite. I wanted to educate athletes about the regulations, the structures, the systems they were operating within. I wanted them to have power, not need me to have it for them. I wanted to plan their futures alongside their careers, not just maximize the next transaction.
Maybe I was idealistic. Maybe I still am.
But those three years after failing the exam weren't avoidance. They were continuing to build something I hoped could survive in the professional world—if I ever decided to test it there.
In 2025, I did a presentation for the International Testing Agency alongside a world champion kayak athlete I'd worked with for years. She was the first athlete I ever supported. We talked about the role of Athlete Support Persons in anti-doping education—what ASPs should be doing for their athletes, how to navigate the regulations, how to build that relationship in a way that actually serves the athlete's interests.
The response was positive. People got it. The model made sense.
Afterward, she told me something that changed everything.
"You need to do this in the professional world."
Not suggested. Not encouraged. Told me. With the kind of conviction that comes from someone who's lived inside the system and knows what's missing from it.
She believed I could bring this approach into professional sport. That it mattered. That athletes there needed it just as much—maybe more—than the ones I'd been working with.
Her faith in me was terrifying.
Because I knew what the professional world looked like. I'd heard it in that waiting room three years earlier. And I wasn't sure my methodology could survive contact with that reality.
But she convinced me to try.
I took the exam again. This time, I passed.
I cried a little when I got the results. It was a real accomplishment—something I'd worked for, something that mattered. But almost immediately, the anxiety set in.
Could what I'd built with We Are Privateers actually translate into a world that had shown, repeatedly, its preference for data over humans, for short-term results over long-term support, for disposability over dignity?
I didn't know.
I still don't.
The January transfer window is weeks away.
My first as a FIFA Licensed Agent.
And I have athletes depending on me.
They're professional footballers based in Africa. Talented. Determined—maybe the most determined athletes I've ever worked with. They want this. They want to play at the highest level they can reach, and they're willing to do what it takes to get there.
The structural realities are what they are: less infrastructure to showcase skills, fewer established pathways into European professional football, less automatic visibility. Not because of anything they lack—just geography and economics and the way the system is built.
But they're not deterred by that. They're pushing forward anyway.
The pressure they carry is immense. From themselves, from family, from their communities. The weight of being the one who might make it.
And they've placed their trust in me to help them navigate this world.
That's what makes me anxious.
Not that they can't do it. Not that they're not good enough.
But that I'm entering a system designed to exploit exactly this kind of determination—this hunger, this dream—and I don't know yet if I can protect them from that while still getting them where they want to go.
If you don't follow football, the January transfer window might sound benign. Technical, even. Just a period when clubs can buy and sell players.
But what it actually is—what it feels like from the inside—is a month-long blast of controlled chaos.
It's shorter than the summer window, more compressed, more desperate. Teams are mid-season, trying to fill gaps to save themselves from relegation or reinforce for a championship push. There's less preparation time, less room for careful evaluation. Everything moves faster.
For players on the fringes—the ones not getting minutes, the ones whose clubs don't want them anymore—it's a chance to find somewhere else. Maybe their last chance for a while. For others, it's the opportunity that could change everything.
For agents, it's leverage season.
This is when you can take clubs hostage. Push wage demands. Manufacture urgency. Play multiple clubs against each other because everyone's operating under time pressure and incomplete information.
It's a bazaar. A marketplace where human beings are discussed, evaluated, traded, and discarded at a pace that makes thoughtful consideration nearly impossible.
Players become portfolios. Careers become quarterly returns.
The language gives it away. You hear people talk about players "not producing," about needing to "move on" from those who aren't "worth keeping." About the math of it—churn through enough prospects and a few will hit. The ones who don't are just... overhead. Failed trials. Sunk costs.
It's not that everyone in this system is cruel. It's that the system itself runs on disposability.
Short-term thinking is rewarded. Quick moves, fast pivots, minimal attachment. If a player doesn't immediately deliver, there's another one waiting. The transfer window doesn't have time for development, for patience, for the messy reality of human growth.
And here's the thing that gnaws at me: the system works better when players don't fully understand it.
When they don't know the regulations, the market dynamics, how their value is being calculated or manipulated. When they need their agent to interpret everything for them. Because dependency keeps them manageable. Ignorance keeps them grateful.
The traditional model isn't just gatekeeping. It's information asymmetry as strategy.
You can extract more value—financial and otherwise—from someone who doesn't know what they don't know.
So here's my problem.
I call myself an Athlete Support Person. Not an agent. The difference isn't semantic—it's philosophical.
I educate my athletes about the regulations, the systems, the machinery they're operating within. I want them to understand their options, their rights, how the process actually works. In many ways, we're learning this professional football world together—I'm not pretending to be the all-knowing expert. I'm figuring it out alongside them.
I plan their futures alongside their careers. Not just "what's the best deal I can get you right now" but "where do you want to be in five years, and how does this decision serve that?"
I built We Are Privateers on the principle that athletes deserve advocates who see them as human beings with complex lives and long-term futures, not as assets to be maximized in the next transaction.
And yes, I need to name the contradiction I'm living in: I benefit financially when these transfers succeed. I'm not doing this for free. The system I'm critiquing is also the system that will pay me. That's the uncomfortable reality. I can tell myself my fees are structured differently, that my incentives are aligned with long-term athlete welfare, but at the end of the day, I'm part of the economic machinery. The question is whether I can take that money without becoming what I witnessed in that waiting room. I don't know yet.
But I'm about to enter a system that fundamentally requires the opposite.
The transfer window runs on information asymmetry. On speed over consideration. On disposability as a feature, not a bug. On agents maintaining dependency because that's how you keep clients.
Can I actually operate differently within these structures?
Or am I just a kinder face on the same transaction?
I genuinely don't know.
Maybe my methodology can survive here. Maybe educating my athletes, giving them power, planning for their long-term futures—maybe that's actually a competitive advantage. Maybe clubs and players will value that approach.
Or maybe I'm naive. Maybe the system will grind down those principles the moment they become inconvenient. Maybe I'll discover that you can't advocate effectively for someone in the bazaar without becoming part of the machinery that dehumanizes them.
Maybe in six months, I'll be the one talking about players who "aren't producing" and need to be "moved on from."
That possibility terrifies me.
The other thing that weighs on me: I don't see many others doing this.
I'm sure they exist—agents who prioritize their athletes' humanity, who operate with integrity, who resist the machinery. They have to exist.
But I haven't found my people yet.
In that waiting room in 2022, I didn't hear anyone questioning the disposability. I didn't hear anyone troubled by the casual cruelty. The culture felt monolithic—this is just how it's done.
And now I'm entering that world, holding onto a philosophy that feels increasingly fragile the closer I get to January.
It's isolating.
Not in a self-pitying way—I chose this. I knew what I was walking into. But there's a loneliness in trying to do something differently when you're not sure if different is even possible within these structures.
I keep wondering: Am I the only one anxious about this? The only one who thinks there should be another way?
Or are there others out there, quietly trying to maintain their principles while navigating the same system, and we just haven't found each other yet?
I hope it's the latter.
Because if it's just me, I'm probably wrong.
I'm writing this now, before the January window opens, because I need to document what I believe before I'm tested.
This is my line in the sand. My manifesto. The thing I can return to when the pressure mounts to compromise, when the system makes it easier to just operate the way everyone else does, when maintaining principles becomes inconvenient.
I don't know if I'll succeed at what I'm attempting. I don't know if my ASP model can survive the transfer window. I don't know if I can protect my athletes' humanity while getting them where they want to go.
But I know why I'm trying.
I remember those 15-16 year olds in that waiting room. The ones who were brought overseas for trials, who failed to meet someone's threshold, who were casually scheduled for disposal. "Not going to cut it. Dump him. Find someone else."
I remember how that felt to hear. The disgust that settled in my chest.
And I refuse to become the person speaking those words.
Even if I fail. Even if I'm naive. Even if the system proves stronger than my principles.
I'd rather fail trying to do this differently than succeed by doing it the way I witnessed in 2022.
My athletes are not inventory. They're not commodities to be moved when they're profitable and dumped when they're not. They're not portfolios or quarterly returns or leverage in negotiations.
They're human beings with dreams and families and communities counting on them. They're determined and talented and willing to sacrifice for a chance most people will never get.
They deserve someone who sees that. Who remembers that. Who fights to preserve their dignity even when the system makes it easier not to.
I don't know if I can be that person consistently. The transfer window will reveal whether my philosophy can withstand the reality of the bazaar.
But I'm going to try.
Because humanity belongs in sport. Even at the professional level. Especially at the professional level.
Athletes are not cattle to be traded.
They're people.
And if I forget that—if I catch myself talking about someone the way those prospective agents talked about kids in a conference center waiting room—then I've lost something more important than any deal I might close.
So this is my accountability. My reminder. My commitment.
When January comes, when the pressure builds, when compromise looks practical and principles look naive—I'll have this.
I'll write about what actually happens. After the window closes, after I've lived inside the bazaar, I'll document what survived and what didn't. Whether my methodology held up or got ground down. Whether I managed to protect my athletes' humanity or became complicit in erasing it.
Not as a victory lap. As accountability.
I know what this essay sets up. A public standard I'll be held to. The possibility of "I told you so" responses if I compromise in ways I didn't anticipate, or if I fail to get my athletes placed. That's the risk of writing this before I'm tested.
But I'd rather be held accountable than operate without scrutiny. I'd rather document what I believe and risk being wrong than enter this quietly and let the system change me without noticing.
The record of what I believed before the system had a chance to change me.
Let's see if it holds.
A.F.