As the 2024-25 season transfer window in South Africa’s Premier Soccer League (PSL) draws to a close at midnight, the role of football agents becomes more critical than ever. Behind the scenes, agents like Basia Michaels, a ground breaking agent in the football industry, are navigating the complexities of player negotiations, transfers, and career management.
Basia is not just any agent—she's a former captain of the University of Johannesburg Women’s Football team and played with the historical squad that clinched the first Varsity Football title in 2013, a significant achievement in her football career. Now, as one of the few female FIFA agents in South Africa, Basia plays a pivotal role in shaping the careers of top talents in South African football.
We had the chance to speak with Basia Michaels to discuss her journey from player to agent and her thoughts on the evolving landscape of football management.
Q: Could you define your job title and role as a sports agent in the football world?
Basia Michaels: My title, I am the managing director of a company called QT Sports the role I have is a sports agent in the world of football, ultimately scouting players, finding players, finding them job opportunities and finding them the right clubs in terms of having those relationships with the clubs, putting the two together and being able to identify the positions that the footballer themselves will be able to occupy within a football club that then gives them employment and then the same thing happens continually throughout their football lifespan.
Q: What was your transition from being a football player to becoming a sports agent like? Was it something you always envisioned for yourself?
Basia Michaels: It wasn't something that I always envisioned for myself, I envisioned to be like those hot-shots attorneys with a corner office that overlooks the city of Johannesburg and overlooked the pretty light that we know and see at night in Johannesburg. Very similar to the perception or the concept that suits sells to everybody else out in the world, where being an attorney is like an amazing closer that closes all these great deals and sorts out the world, that was the vision I had for myself and behold it's changed obviously because I am now a FIFA accredited sports agent.
That transition comes from having played football, having grown up in and around footballers, and football being a massive, massive part of my life and being something that I do believe is actually within my blood. That transition between being an attorney, because that’s actually what I am — I'm an admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa, to finding myself becoming a FIFA agent was seamless because football is always something that I've done and law was something that I have a great understanding of. Putting the two together was putting myself in a position where I took two worlds that can exist on their own, but I put them together and ensured that I find myself in a space where the world's exist as a collaboration of the two together and it's a beautiful world to live in, I must admit it’s something that I've enjoyed thoroughly.
Q: What has been your most memorable signing as a sports agent so far in your career?
Basia Michaels: My most memorable signing, I have a few of them really, it's so hard to pick and choose, [but] during this current window I can definitely say taking Khanyisa Mayo to CR Belouizdad, it has been an amazing experience and it has been a great journey. Vincent Pule to SuperSport was lovely because obviously he then played his first game and scored against [his former club] Orlando Pirates, he's finding his feet again and finding his goal scoring opportunities.
There’s one that's been really great for me this season as well, but it hasn’t been announced yet, so I can't put myself in the space where I turn around and I put it out there and announce that this is it. It's been a great journey with this player and now it's taking us to a better path of life after football which is something that I really, really want to start focusing on, to ensure that at QT Sport it's not just an agency that only looks after the players in their prime of their lives but we'll also be putting them in spaces that give them opportunities to carry on with life after football and continue to look after them at that point or within the that trajectory, because certain relationships are something that you want to carry out and keep for as long as possible.
Q: Share with us some of your career-defining moments as a sports agent so far.
Basia Michaels: My career-defining moment was definitely passing that FIFA agent exam. It came back, it was something that was there in the early 2000s, stopped in 2008 and then became intermediaries, I joined the space much later during the phase of people being intermediaries. FIFA put together the licence and now we have to write the exams. I wrote the very first set of exams, I think the numbers were 5,000 across the world and the pass rate wasn't even half.
I know for us there were about three people that passed and I think the most memorable thing was getting a congratulatory call from somebody within CAF who said to me ‘well done, really, really proud of you [and] really proud to see your name on the list on my desk. And knowing that I actually know you and that I've dealt with you is really a great feeling’, that was lovely for me. That was a career defining moment, passing my FIFA agent exam especially because that exam was so contentious and it was a very difficult exam. A large number of people failed and I just found myself amongst the group of people that had passed, which was really lovely.
Q: What qualities do you look for in athletes you choose to represent?
Basia Michaels: I think many, many people out there have the talent, and this is probably why it takes us so long to to be able to identify players that we want to keep as part of our stable because one of the things that I've learned about football so far is that it's it's 90% discipline and 10% talent.
Yes you have to be talented, but the disciplined players last so much longer and those are the kinds of clients that you want and the kind of longevity that you want to grow with, that’s ultimately the space that we want to put ourselves in. We go about identifying clients by also taking into account their social standards and what they do socially, the home that they are from and the type of lifestyle that they currently live based on age, or whatever the appropriate barometer is at that point of time, I mean younger players don't necessarily have lifestyle but that’s when you expect them to be a lot more disciplined with with the manner in which they carry themselves in the things that they do.
I think discipline for me, you taking a very, very important step within making sure that you work hard and you put yourself in a space where your craft and ultimately the God given Talent that you have is something you look after look after to ensure that you are successful, because for us it's about what you are able to do on the field yes but 90% of it is also off the field because if you can do all the right things off the field then it enables you to put that 10% in at 100% of that 10% on the field and that's a very important concept and that's really something that we look for in our athletes.
Pride doesn’t begin to describe the feeling of just watching the best God given gift blossom. I continue to be on my knees in praise and prayers
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