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Dedicated Agency - Walla! sport

2021-10-22T13:17:13.758Z


Until two years ago she was a TV producer with no idea about football, but then she was sucked into a new and fascinating field. The sleepless nights, the successes and the disappointments - Nitzan Peled, an acting agent, tells in a special column how she entered a masculine and tough world and did what even to her only a few years ago seemed completely imaginary


Hi there, so we're meeting for the first time.

My name is Nitzan, and you will soon be reading one of the most delusional stories in football.

Do not believe?

I did not really believe either.

We will know more, but before that, we will start with the banal details.

In the Agents' Premier League.

Nitzan Peled with Lucas Spendelhofer and agent Idan Ben Abu at the time of signing in Sakhnin in 2020 (Photo: Private photo)

I am 25 years old, married to Tzlil Nehemiah, a footballer who is currently playing in Greece in the second division. What do I do with my life? Well, that's a bit of a complex question. Until two years ago I was a TV producer, and today I can already call myself an "acting agent." It's time to tell how I came into the profession in such a short time.



In the last 6 years my life has changed from end to end. If you told me that today I would live in Greece, in the small historic town of Sparta, that my husband would play in a team called "Astras and Achiotti" (do not try, to spell the name correctly, even I still could not) and that I would still be the one to make it all happen, I would say To you who went crazy.



In 2015, during my military service, I met Tzlil, then a player in Kiryat Gat from the national league. My connection to football was then as realistic as the connection between Lionel Messi and Hapoel Marmorek. Sound would update me on the results of the games after the final whistle.TV? Live results online? Who even thought of that?



The connection began to tighten and with it my affinity for the industry.

Sound went through hard times early in my career and I just wanted to help.

Since I do not have a rich dad who will buy a team, I just started calling different people from the football field, to get them to know the sound.

I fired high.

I can say in retrospect that this is what ignited the fuse.

This is where my first and most significant step in the world of football took place.

Piles of data

I gradually became one who was completely unfamiliar with the field, the one who was waiting to receive the sports supplement every morning instead of the "Laisha" newspaper, who before she went on Facebook in the morning did a scan of every word on the sports sites. Suddenly I find myself starting to mess with football. Only in football.



These days I was still working as the producer of Rainbow 12, the "Dream Servant" that I worked so hard to get. How hard? I worked for free on photo days for almost a year - cleaning jobs, physical jobs, yo nim it. I did everything to move forward, and I progressed - but the heart was no longer there. Then I decided to take action. I turned to Idan Ben Abu, owner of the actors' agency ISCOUT.



I wanted to get into the field at all costs and made a huge presentation, in which I expressed my opinion on the players that are about to break out in the coming season.

Sleepless nights, piles of data, statistics.

I sat at the computer until 4:00 in the morning and left an hour later for a photo day.

The eyes are swollen and tiring, but the heart is full.

Idan was impressed and gave me the first chance, the first practical foothold in the football world.

He taught me everything from scratch.

In that presentation, by the way, there were some names you probably know today, but I'll leave you a little curious.

With his partner Tzlil Nehemiah at the celebrations of Ness Ziona's promotion to the Premier League (Photo: Private photo)

The beginning was difficult. I got into the cauldron of the lower leagues, players who have just finished teenage and advanced to adulthood, some injured or have been injured recently, definitely a challenging starting point. Just think that every coach gets dozens of phone calls, and not just from me, but from dozens of other agents like me, who also have players who have just finished their teens and are looking for a place that will give them a stage. A real war.



When I entered the field I was engrossed in the flags of one sentence - to see first of all the actor and his personal good, to fight for him to get to the place that is best for him professionally. All this time I was wondering - why would a particular coach take a player from me? Unfamiliar player Dangerous Unrecognized, minus and more minus. But wait, according to the laws of mathematics, minus and minus are a plus.



It was a difficult summer.

I have not left my phone, computer and tablet, or any other source that allows me to connect with people.

Yes I left the dream job.

I started from scratch, you could say I built my name and the name of the young players I treated right together, at the same time.

I knew I was in a challenging situation, in every way - a young girl, maybe not the first woman in the field but still young, entering a very masculine market.



Ben Abu supported me and trusted me all the way.

I realized that I must not disappoint him and especially not myself.

When I felt that I was not being taken seriously - I insisted, even if it meant starting the car and driving two hours in each direction to Hapoel Umm al-Fahm, to land in the middle of the day at the team's executive offices without notice, burst into the owner's room and explain he was making a mistake. My actor.

By the way, he eventually took it, and this is not the only time it has happened.

Bingo on both sides.

Stefan Marinowitz (Photo: Maor Elkelsi)

With experience, the size of the transactions also changed. ISCOUT's unique collaboration with the global agency BASE allowed us to bring good and quality foreigners to Israel. This is basically what paved the way for my first "foreign" deal - Ronaldo's move to Manchester United. Well, I will correct the signing of stopper Lucas Spendelhofer in Bnei Sakhnin last season. It was not easy - the days are the days of Corona, it is harder than ever to bring in foreign players. Lucas' family could not come here for the same reasons and he actually lived here alone for a long time. As an agency, we actually "adopted" him as another family member - holiday eves and Fridays, shared dinners, help ordering food at home and basically every little thing imaginable. This is exactly what I learned from Idan, his partner Shai Atas and from every ISCOUT agency - the work does not end with the signing, it just starts there. This season we have signed on to bring goalkeeper Stefan Marinovich to the Galilee landscape, which in the meantime looks like bingo to both sides.



The desire to prove exists. Always. Yes, there are also disappointments, and quite a few. For a deal to be successful (especially that of a foreign player) so many factors need to work together, in a kind of synergy, for this thing to work out at all. The chain is long: from the player's parent club abroad to the partner agent abroad, to the agency in Israel, to the receiving team - and that's just at the tip of the fork. Thus, for example, the deal fell with Savian Lilayi, who was supposed to come to Hapoel Ramat Gan but did not receive a release from his team in the end.



Think about every single successful deal you read on websites and there are dozens more that have failed. To get the same deal you have to work all the time. With the official start of the transfer window is the opening signal for a musical chairs game. From that moment on a manhunt was held and there were not enough chairs for everyone. The difference is language needs to be prepared. To grab a chair one has to start writing the tune months in advance, always live the market, knowing which players a team is looking for at any given moment. If a certain team needs a striker - I have to be there and offer it to him, exactly in the profile it is looking for, in its budget, and on the other hand bring a good striker, one who will really upgrade. Herein lies a difficulty. Good players usually have other options on the table outside of Israel, and the job of a good agent is to know how to put together the complex puzzle between the player and the team. Sometimes it's a 10,000 piece puzzle and sometimes it's almost impossible to see the final picture, but when you discover it, believe me, it's the most beautiful in the world.



This is not the end, I am here to tell you what is happening behind the scenes, to analyze what is happening within the teams, to talk about the processes and moves that lead Israeli football from a point of view that you have not heard before.

I promised we would meet again, no?

Source: walla

All sports articles on 2021-10-22

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