Carlos Ribeiro is a name that may be unfamiliar to Australian footballing circles, but the former player turned agent has a significant ambition to help young Australian talents achieve their dreams of playing overseas.
Having opted to end his playing career at 22, Ribeiro (now 23), co-founded the Joga Bonito Football Agency alongside his father in an effort to offer an authentic career consultation for players who are looking to take the step to playing in the highest tiers of Europe.
Ribeiro chatted with Soccerscene about why having a recent playing career has allowed him to better mentor young players, the mistakes young players make when attempting to solidify themselves in Europe, and the stigma surrounding player agents.
What does your agency specialise in?
Carlos Ribeiro: We’re providing opportunities for the professional development of mainly Australian-based junior footballers. We have a lot of requests for professional players in the Asian and European market, but we’ve started to bring in a lot of A-League youth talents to Portugal-based clubs.
We’re providing a lot of the young NPL and young A-League youth academy players a chance in Europe, instead of going through the system here and trying to crack the A-League. Over the last four months, I’ve placed 16 Aussie boys in Europe.
What did you take from your playing career into your work as an agent?
Carlos Ribeiro: I played professionally in Europe, having left Australia when I was 15. I played until I was 21 in Europe and came back here at 22. I spent a year in the NPL and decided to call it quits. My father’s always been involved with football in management and coaching, so he got me involved. We started to build a new company, which became Joga Bonito Football Agency and our linking company 352 Futebol Management. 352 is designed more for when we’re going to be sorting out professional contracts, especially with those players who are set to reach that level.
Joga Bonito is a bit of everything. We have coaches providing extra training on the side, personal trainers, nutritionists – everything like that. We have everything going for the players in that sense. My dad and I then started to look at the Australian market for players, because it’s a good market and there’s not many people who can do what we’re doing here. Especially for the players who haven’t built that high profile outside of Australia.
Did your experiences with agents as a player overseas motivate you to kickstart this agency?
Carlos Ribeiro: I went through a lot of different agents as a player, and I had good ones and bad ones. I had a few good reference points in terms of how to conduct yourself as an agent, and I still work with and interact with these agents to this day.
I’m only 23, my father is obviously 50 and the other people we work with are in their 30s and 40s. I think because I played the game not so long ago, I can reflect through the players and interact with them in a way that allows them to open up. And then I can give them my lived experience.
My experiences playing in youth sides with players like Ruben Vinagre (now at Sporting CP) and Rafael Leão (now at AC Milan) gives me good insight into what it takes to reach the top tier. And by contrast, I have myself as an example of a player who didn’t quite reach the level they were expected to. So in that sense, I know the process that the players need to follow.
The biggest thing for players to realise is that if you’ve got a manager and a mentor, and you’re employing someone to be that, you should listen to what they say. Myself and my colleagues know the market well, and for the players who choose patience and following the process we believe they’ll get there.
Obviously with agents it’s hard to find a lot of honest ones. And they’ll tell you: ‘You’re going to achieve this, and you’re going to get there’, but there’s no guarantee. All of the players we manage have good qualities, a couple of them are at an elite level, but they need to follow the process and understand that they’re arriving in a country where they’re unknown. They’re just another number. It’s up to the athlete to then prove themselves. We can only do so much.
What are the issues you see with players when they go overseas?
Carlos Ribeiro: There’s a couple of different things – some think because they’ve signed something that they’ve made it, but they haven’t. Some worry too much about the living conditions. Being comfortable, sharing a living space or little things where players don’t realise they haven’t reached that height where they can live in a big house on their own. They need to realise that they’re players that are going to have shared rooms for a few years, and they won’t have the luxury of parents driving them to training all the time.
They need to adapt – that’s what these players in Europe and South America have done for a long time. They use everything that’s made it hard for them to succeed as fighting power to actually succeed. And I stress to the players that I was on my own without my parents for pretty much the entire time in Europe. These are the little things in player’s mentalities that need to change.
It’s interesting because Australian football is in a place where it’s trying to figure out how to get our players to compete successfully and to reach the heights of the most successful players in Europe. From an agent’s perspective, what are the key things that will help Australian footballers reach these levels?
Carlos Ribeiro: In Australia we have a system where if you’re in an A-League academy side between the age of 16 and 19 and you’re progressing, you are potentially going to receive a scholarship contract. But realistically, that’s a small amount of the players in these academies receiving these contracts. There’s only a certain amount of scholarship spots available and then once they hit 21, they’re kicked out if they haven’t hit the level required.
If you’re a top NPL or A-League academy player, you should be looking abroad especially when you’re 16 or 17. That’s where your future is going to be, because there’s multiple divisions and multiple clubs. Here we only have 12 clubs at the professional level.
Australian football – with a second division, more teams and promotion & relegation – realistically makes people like myself who are ambitious ready to go overseas. All of these clubs overseas are going to produce players at a higher level because the training is different. There’s more players, more competition and most importantly, there’s more games.
All of these boys that I’m sending overseas are good enough for the A-League and in a few years can be potential Socceroos. If they stayed here, they may have never gotten the chance to test themselves overseas where the elite level (depending on the division) is better or on par with the A-League. We’re going to have more players playing at a high level with more game time.
What is your advice for players who have aspirations for heading overseas?
Carlos Ribeiro: I’m a young guy, ex-player and agent in a company with other people who have access to a good pool of in a lot of countries with a good database to get players. We work with multiple players and other agencies in Colombia, Brazil and across Europe.
As an agent, I want to say to players who are looking for an opportunity, especially those who can’t see that happening here, to get moving sooner rather than later. Because with every year you waste, the gap becomes bigger and bigger and the chances become smaller.
