Paul Stretford, the millionaire agent of Wayne Rooney, became the most high-profile casualty of the Football Association's crackdown on agents last night when he was banned from working in the industry for 18 months after being found guilty of a series of offences that have left his professional reputation in tatters.
Stretford, founder of Proactive Sports Management, was also fined £300,000 after an independent disciplinary commission decided he had committed serious breaches by making false statements and misleading the jury during the 2004 trial of three men accused of blackmailing him for a share of the huge earnings he was raking in from representing Rooney.
Seven of the FA's nine charges were deemed proven but Stretford announced that he would appeal, meaning he is free to continue work for the time being. The former vacuum-cleaner salesman described it as a "travesty" but whether he will be able to salvage his reputation is another matter at the end of a four-year investigation which has looked at the way he took over representing Rooney, then 16, from the player's original agent, Peter McIntosh, in 2002, and the circumstances surrounding the collapse of the subsequent blackmail trial against three of McIntosh's associates.
Stretford had told the jury at Warrington crown court that he had not represented Rooney until December 2002, when the player's contract with McIntosh's company, Proform Sports Management, had expired. The defence team then produced documents showing that Rooney had signed a full agreement with Stretford on two separate occasions in July and September that year. It was a fatal blow to the prosecution case and the trial collapsed, with the Crown Prosecution Service telling the court: "We do not feel able to rely upon Paul Stretford as a witness in this case."
Cheshire police did not bring perjury charges but the FA suspected there had been a serious breach of rules and accused Stretford of "making false and/or misleading witness statements to police and giving false and/or misleading testimony to Warrington crown court." A charge of enticing Rooney away from McIntosh was not proved but Stretford was found guilty of failing to protect Rooney's interests and failing to respect the rights of a third party. A charge of entering into a contract with Rooney for eight years - six more than the two allowed - was also proved.
An FA statement read: "The commission found that Mr Stretford did encourage Mr Rooney and his parents to enter into a representation agreement with Proactive on July 17 2002 although he knew Mr Rooney was still then under contract with Proform Sports ... The commission found that Mr Stretford had made a misleading witness statement and had given untruthful evidence in court in criminal proceedings, particularly in relation to the existence, dates and nature of [Rooney's] representation agreements dated July 17 2002 and September 19 2002."
The ban will not come into force until Stretford's appeal has been heard and the second nine months will not be invoked unless he is found to have broken other regulations. Rooney will not seek a new agent, however.
Stretford, who made £1.5m from the forward's transfer to Manchester United in 2004 and who has also represented Andy Cole and Stan Collymore, was at Rooney's wedding last month and made a point of thanking "Wayne and his family" after the "unjust" verdict. His appeal will be based on the assertion that he believed Rooney had signed only an image-rights deal in 2002 and that the paperwork was not signed by himself. He will also aver that Rooney and his family approached him rather than the other way around, and if the FA upholds its decision he will consider taking it to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
