From Manchester United to 'insulting' Rui Costa - meet agent David Lavelle

Belfast-based Lavelle speaks so casually about dealing with the Premier League giants – like it has become second nature. Is it just the norm now? "That's a standard day to be honest,” he chuckles.

With plans to open up new offices in Belfast city centre and further afield, business is booming for Lavelle, who is the head of 365footballmanagement – and the ‘365’ is certainly well earned.

This week alone he visited Serie A champions AC Milan before dashing across Italy to Juventus, hopped over to Barcelona for some dealings with the Catalan powerhouse and neighbouring Espanyol and will make his way home via Celtic, Rangers and a host of clubs in England.

As you can imagine, January is a particularly busy period for Lavelle...but something about this past window was even more frantic.

"January was mad,” says a man who played a role in Manchester United loaning Axel Tuanzebe to Stoke City, Weston McKennie’s switch from Juventus to Leeds United and almost facilitated a Deadline Day loan move for an unnamed PSG goalkeeper to the Championship – among others.

"You don't get them all over the line!" he concedes.

Maybe not them all, but it’s good work for someone who became a football agent almost by mistake through a mix of curiosity and a want to test himself.

“I didn't mean to (become a football agent),” he said.

"I was a saturation diver for 17 or 18 years. I thought I may as well study for it and when we were decompressing we had a lot of time.

"We could be lying in bunks in a decompression chamber doing nothing for a week before coming back to the surface, so I thought rather than watching movies I could put that time to good use and study.

"I did the exam but never thought I would do anything else with it. I only did it for the sake of myself - not with the expectation of ever using it.

"Oil prices dropped so when you would have been working for eight months of the year, maybe you were now working four months so I had a bit more time and contacted my friend who was a football agent.

"It just went from there and I was working for Darron Gibson as one of my first clients, who was at Sunderland at the time."

Rather than having a clientele of players, Lavelle now works directly for football clubs – "I used to take on clients but it's just too much hassle,” he says – helping them fill gaps in their squad or finding new homes for players who are no longer required.

He considers Manchester United director of football John Murtough “a very good friend” (Lavelle also helped finalise midfielder Donny van de Beek’s move to Old Trafford from Ajax in 2020, which was reportedly worth in excess of £35 million) and risked getting on the wrong side of Benfica chief Rui Costa recently.

"Whatever he asks for, he doesn't budge,” he says of the former Portuguese star who was at the forefront of World Cup winner Enzo Fernandez’s record-breaking January move to Chelsea.

"If he wants £105 million he will not go to £104 million. That's just Rui Costa.

"I went to him recently about a player to put out on loan and I don't know if it's mixed up in translation but he said 'David, you insult me!'.”

The nature of the business means Lavelle is always kept on his toes, not knowing what even the next hour could bring.

“You don't know who will be on the phone,” he explains. “Carlo Cudicini was on the other morning. He's now the loan manager for Chelsea.”

Lavelle is aware of what most people think of football agents, but you can tell he isn’t cut from the same cloth as those “rotten apples”.

"The dogs in the street know that football agents have a bad reputation,” he concedes.

"Agents get a bad reputation because in every industry there are a few rotten apples, but unfortunately when there's an agent who doesn't do something by the book or gets greedy it impacts all of us.

"We're not all like that. We're decent people and look after our clients the best we can."

Winter will soon roll into summer and that brings another hectic period for Lavelle as clubs try to set themselves up for a successful 2023/24 campaign.

Some already have a plan of what they want and when they want to act on it, they know who to call.

"It's being successful and going from a guy from Belfast not really meaning to get into the industry and giving it a go,” he says when asked what his proudest moment is.

"I'm always ambitious with anything I do in life. When I was a diver, I didn't want to be a normal diver - I wanted to be a sat diver which is a massive step. It's like the Premier League of diving!

"When I started the agency, did I think I'd be where I am today? No, I didn't.

"We've come on leaps and bounds and have the trust of clubs. I'm proud of what we've built but it's only the tip of the iceberg.

"We will grow and expand and I think we can do a lot more than we are doing now. I'm really proud - a guy from Belfast competing with all these top agents throughout the world.

"We're playing with the big boys and coming out on top."