02 March 2024 , 20:30
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Pioneering British football agent Jonathan Barnett is retiring.
Barnett helped guide the careers of many of the sport’s leading stars such as Gareth Bale and Jack Grealish. His Stellar Group, established in 1994 with David Manasseh, was named by Forbes as the most valuable football agency in the world before being sold to Hollywood talent agency ICM Partners in 2020.
Barnett, 74, was also previously proclaimed the world’s No.1 football agent based on commissions, which included masterminding the £85.3million move of Bale to Real Madrid from Spurs in 2013. But the veteran deal-maker has now decided to call it a day after a recent family bereavement left him contemplating his future.
Barnett has been fiercely loyal to his players over his career, and often hit out at Real Madrid fans and the Spanish media for their treatment of Bale towards the end of his career in the Spanish capital, when he was labelled a 'parasite' by newspaper Marca.
Speaking in 2022, Barnett said: "Bale deserves a grand farewell from the club. And no, we have not yet decided on the future.
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Barnett helped broker Gareth Bale's move to Real Madrid in 2013 (Getty Images)"He speaks Spanish. What happens is that people who do not know him say that he does not. Stupid and ignorant people who have not spoken to him. It's a shame.
"He has always been very happy in Madrid, he arrived as a young man, his children were born in the city, he has donated a lot of money to Spanish hospitals for Covid (a reported £400k) and he loves the city and the club, and I think the parasites are the ones who speak ill of him."
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