Shocking! Agent Claims He Paid From His Own Pocket To Fund For Arsenal Superstar’s Move

In a recent shocking revelation, it has been reported that in Andrei Arshavin’s dramatic 2009 move from Zenit St Petersburg to Arsenal, agent Jon Smith had put up £1.2million demanded by the Russian club out of his own pocket. Smith relived perhaps one of the tightest deal in transfer history, that was eventually finalized between the two clubs with a one-word email eight seconds before the transfer deadline ended, while he was a guest on BT Sport on Monday.

As there wasn’t much action in this transfer window, Smith remembered and shared some of his football business experiences to offer some insight into what was really going behind the scenes of some of the more intense deals. Remembering this deal, he said,

“I was involved with Andrei Arshavin. That deal started in the second week in January” 

“Funnily enough, the guy at the Russian end was in charge of the Russia national gas company at the time. The previous week he’d cut off the Czech Republic’s supply and this week he was talking about football deals.”

Smith says discussions were quite slow regarding the deal and it was the deadline day, January 30.

‘We got to the 30th of January, and everyone thought we better hurry up here. Then it got really serious,’ he said on BT Sport.

“It was snowing. So we flew the player over anyway (Ashavin was in Paris and Smith, with his brother Phil, feared he’d be stranded there). 

It got to the very last day and we were about £1.2million apart with about an hour to go. And it was literally who blinked, and I sat in the middle of it as the agent.

In the end, I offered the Russians the extra money. And I said to Arsenal I’ve done this. And we had 30 seconds to go.

They had to email it through, and with eight seconds to go the Russians came through with the word ‘accepted’. “

And the £15million deal was done which saw Arshavin bag four against Liverpool but he failed to light up the Emirates consistently. He eventually ended up at Zenit, after being sold back to them in June 2013 on loan. The Russian ended his career in England with 31 goals in his 143 games for the Gunners.