“Many people are courting me without my knowledge”

Stefan de Vrij and Romelu Lukaku They have been teammates on and off at Inter since 2019. The Dutch international remembers the moment when he first had serious doubts about who was being paid in the deal that brought him to Inter Milan. And it wasn’t an agent, lawyer or accountant who alerted him: it was Romelu Lukaku.

The two teammates were talking after training in September 2019, more than a year after De Vrij, now a centre-back with 66 caps, moved to Inter. It all started innocently enough, with Lukaku discussing De Vrij’s status as a free agent when he joined in the summer of last year. He then asked De Vrij about the agency that represented him.

“The question was, ‘Do you have a signed contract?'” recalls De Vrij. “I told him no. He (Lukaku) said: ‘Did they represent you?’ I said, ‘Of course! They’re my agent.’ It doesn’t mean they represent me.

That conversation nearly five years ago sparked what would become one of football’s most high-profile legal cases. This included two court hearings in Amsterdam and two multimillion-dollar compensation awards. De Vrij, who was 26 when he moved to Inter, is now 32. He has sought compensation from the Netherlands’ largest talent agency for not disclosing the amount of commission they paid him for the deal that brought him to the club, and the consequences that rate can have for your own liability on taxes.

That agency is Sports Entertainment Group (SEG), run by agent Kees Vos, who represents Erik ten Hag, Rasmus Hojlund, Cody Gakpo and Robin van Persie, among others. It will emerge from De Vrij’s transfer to Inter that SEG earned a fee of €9.5 million and is entitled to a further 7.5 per cent of any additional transfer fee paid by De Vrij.

He got paid

In April 2022, De Vrij obtained compensation of €4.75 million plus interest in a civil case against SEG. Vos took the case to an appeals court in Amsterdam and vowed to overturn the verdict. In April this year, the appeal court upheld the original verdict and De Vrij’s award against SEG was raised to €5.2 million plus interest.

Now, six years since that move to Inter was agreed, De Vrij can finally tell his story. Since his circumstances became public, he said many players have contacted him privately. Those players have questions about the transfers they were involved in and what the implications of those deals are for them going forward.

De Vrij said that when he learned the full scope of SEG’s commission, his lawyers warned him that his tax liability meant he had to act if he wanted to avoid financial consequences. “I told my story (to some football players) and what they do with it is up to them. What I always advise is… who represents you, of course it matters. But make sure that an independent party reviews all the documents. I think that’s the best advice I can give a lawyer.

Someone did the work of an agent

“I was surprised,” he said. De Vrij went back to Lukaku and told him. “And he (Lukaku) said to me: ‘Don’t you know what they did?’ You risk paying taxes on your commission.'” “I thought: how is this possible? I’m already making a lot of money without my knowledge.” “Lukaku told me: ‘Okay, it’s true that there is no signed contract on your part with anyone but someone represents you and works for you. Then the tax authorities can say: ‘Hey, you said you don’t have an agent, but we can see on Instagram or on the company’s website, that they work for you and you should have declared taxes and you should have paid the tax authorities.'”

The next thing Lukaku did was give him his lawyer’s number. De Vrij then called his brother Niels, who works in finance, and the two decided to find out exactly how much SEG made from the deal to bring him to Inter. De Vrij admitted that, even before the talks with Lukaku, he harbored some suspicions. When his contract with Lazio expired, his relationship with the club became strained. Lazio did not want to lose him on a free transfer and both sides blamed each other. De Vrij said SEG did not want him to re-sign for Lazio although the two parties had discussed that option.