Football for sale: agent told undercover reporter 'if you can't beat them, join them', bribery trial hears

A “corrupt” football agent told an undercover reporter that “if you can’t beat them, join them” as a trial heard yesterday how a covert Telegraph investigation was “massively in the public interest”.

Dax Price, 48, was recorded saying how the “trouble” with English football was that “everyone is getting looked after” as deals are brokered to secure lucrative player transfers, Southwark Crown Court heard.

Mr Price, along with fellow agent, Giuseppe ‘Pino’ Pagliara, 64, are charged with paying and facilitating a bribe in the so-called ‘Football for Sale’ case.

Secret recordings of their meetings and telephone conversations with Claire Newell, the Telegraph’s investigations editor, were played to the jury during which it was claimed “backhanders” to managers were commonplace.

The agents explained how Harry Redknapp, the then director of football at Derby, and Neil Warnock, Cardiff City manager - “all them sort of people” - “needed looking after” while brokering deals.

At one point, Mr Price said he had spoken to Lee Johnson who had been “amazed” by the level of corruption after moving from a lower league club to manage Bristol City in the Championship league.

Recalling an alleged conversation with the Bristol manager, it was claimed: “He said, ‘Well, people are getting backhanders left right and centre. There’s so much money flying around.’”

Later, Mr Price was filmed claiming Mr Johnson had said he did not want to be “that way” - an apparent reference to being corrupt, before adding: “He said, ‘I have realised that you have to be - there’s no other way round it.’”

Ms Newell told Mr Price: “That’s just how it’s done.”

Mr Price, from Sittingbourne Kent replied: “Yeah, it’s like if you can’t beat them, join them.”

The football agent was also recorded explaining how the UK was where “everyone wants to be”, adding how “there are so many ways of getting paid, different types of getting paid.”

But, in a later meeting, Mr Price said Mr Johnson “would never ever” take money, explaining “not everyone is crooked”.

There were recordings of Mr Pagliara saying that while he had operated in a “sneaky” way for 30 years, he was now eager to be “transparent”, before telling the reporter that the football industry is “not for the faint hearted and it’s not for the morally correct.”

Mr Pagliara, from Bury, Greater Manchester, concluded: “If you’ve got those sentiments, respectfully change business.”

Mr Price added: “That’s the trouble - everyone is getting looked after.”

Giving evidence on the third day of the trial, Ms Newell said in 2015 she received a tip-off from a source about club managers receiving “bungs and bribes” from football agents during player transfer deals.

She told the jury of seven men and five women: “I thought it was massively in the public interest to expose this kind of behaviour because, on the face of it, it would appear to be quite straight forward corruption.”

She explained how she set up a fake German-based sports company called Meiran which she pretended had wealthy Far East investors eager to cash in on football transfers.

When the investigation was published in Autumn 2016, Sam Allardyce, the England manager, was forced to resign.

Mr Wright, 53, from Barnsley, South Yorkshire, denies two counts of accepting a bribe when it was claimed he received £5,000 in an envelope. Mr Pagliara, who had claimed he gave Sir Alex Ferguson a £30,000 Rolex watch to smooth one deal, and Mr Price deny two counts of paying and facilitating a bribe.

The trial continues.