23 September 2023 , 21:30
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Former Arsenal transfer boss Sven Mislintat is under investigation by his club Ajax and VfB Stuttgart over a summer signing he negotiated.
The 50-year-old was Arsenal's head of recruitment for 14 months before becoming Stuttgart’s sporting director in April 2019. The German is being probed over the transfer of VfB Stuttgart’s Croatian defender Borna Sosa to the Dutch giants on deadline day last month.
The Bundesliga club have also launched an investigation amid allegations of a conflict of interest with Mislintat and German agent Arthur Beck, who acted for Sosa.
It’s been revealed that Mislintat had a professional connection to Beck through the sporting director’s scouting data analysis firm Matchmetrics, which is used by clubs worldwide as a player database. Beck’s own player agency, AKA Global, is a shareholder in Matchmetrics founded by Mislintat in 2019.
It’s believed 25-year-old Sosa had agreed to join Sevilla, but suddenly changed his mind to instead join Ajax on deadline day. It’s also emerged that the previous day, Sosa changed his agent from Thies Bliesmeister at ICM Stellar, owned by Gareth Bale’s advisor Jonathan Barnett, to AKA Global which then earned commission from Ajax for brokering the £7million transfer.
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Ajax have admitted they were aware of the connection between Matchmetric’s and AKA Global, and have not yet suspended Mislintat. But he’s been ordered to stay away from the club while it’s determined if the relationship between him and Beck breached any stock exchange rules with Ajax listed as a limited company.
In a statement they said: “Given that the player acquired by Ajax this summer is represented by AKA Global, the club is looking at this further with the assistance of external advisors. An independent external inquiry will also be carried out by a forensic accountant and Sven Mislintat has offered his full co-operation, including sharing all relevant documentation.”
Rob Jansen, president of the European Football Agents Association, has strongly condemned Mislintat’s conduct and urged Ajax to suspend him while the inquiry continues.
“This is absurd and commercially dangerous. It’s bad conduct” says Jansen. “It’s highly questionable. He is abusing his position as director of the club in this way. It seems he has had a free pass to work this way, but Ajax is a stock listed company.”
During his time at Arsenal Mislintat was involved in recruiting Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Dinos Mavropanos, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Bernd Leno, Sokratis, Lucas Torreira, Matteo Guendouzi and Stephan Lichtsteiner. He came under fire for some of those signings but said at the time: “I don’t feel ashamed of any of those transfers, on the contrary, I will always defend these guys. Not because they were my players but because they were Arsenal players and capable ones.’’
Arsenal finished fifth during his spell at The Emirates and reached the Europa League Final where they lost 4-1 to Chelsea in Baku, Azerbaijan.
“Those players turned up. The team went unbeaten in 22 games in all competitions, made it to the Europa League final and finished fifth with 70 points. You can say that’s not good enough. But many teams would love to finish fifth now.’’