The moment you send something written down, you lose control of it.

I once lost a Premier League transfer because of a single screenshot.

I was negotiating on behalf of a French agent with a Premier League club for a top international midfielder.

The backdrop to this was that the player also had a very strong offer from a big Bundesliga club but from out side, everything was verbally agreed: the transfer fee, the wages, the agents's fee, etc.

Then the Sporting Director called me. I'd known him for a long time and never had any issues. On this occasion, because of the size of the deal, he said needed something to cover himself internally. So that if the owners questioned why he'd gone this big on the wages, he wanted to be able to show them the player genuinely had a German offer at that level. He framed it around trust: you can trust me, Nick, I just need something I can show if I'm questioned.

I went to my French partner and suggested a screenshot of the German offer to get this over the line. He didn't want to send it, for one reason: he didn't trust the English club's Sporting Director. Unfortunately, I vouched for him, and, on the strength of my word, he sent it into the group.

This is the point where it went horribly wrong.

To our shock, within half an hour, my French agent received a furious message from the Bundesliga club.

I can't believe you'd send our offer to a Premier League club! That's totally unprofessional!! We can't trust you, we never want to do business with you again!

What had actually happened was worse than I could have imagined. We had lost control of the communication channels.

Instead of holding the screenshot as backup for the owners as promised, the Sporting Director had forwarded it to a German agent he thought was friendly to him, to check the offer was real. That agent sent it straight to the Bundesliga club, and 2 months' work got torpedoed in 30 minutes.

My French agent was raging. He quite rightly told the Sporting Director he'd never deal with him again and left the group immediately. He blamed me and the Sporting Director for it, and I understood, because his instinct had been right and my word had overruled it.

The Premier League transfer died in that group chat. The French agent spent the next 2 days repairing his relationship with the German club, and the deal got done for him, the player and the Bundesliga club.

His faith in me took a hit, and I repaired it conversation by conversation, mostly by doubling down on interest in his other players, until the conversation between us moved from the deal that didn't happen to 2 or 3 new clubs interested in different players of his.

The lesson has stayed with me since. The moment something is written down and shared, you lose control of it, and in a negotiation, losing control of information is rarely a small mistake. Written communication is for confirming positions, sharing information and keeping a record of what's been said.

💡 Lesson - use writing to confirm what's been agreed. For the moments that decide a deal, get on the phone or get in the room.