By Julien Pretot
PARIS (Reuters) - Former Premier League striker Louis Saha has launched an exclusive social network to help young athletes deal with the off-field demands of modern sport that he hopes will help combat bad agents and advisers.
The former France international and Manchester United striker has developed Axis Stars, a platform with a double function -- to assist athletes in looking into contracts and insurance policies, while acting as matchmaker to pair them with agents and companies.
"The goal is to make the world of sport more transparent," Saha, who won 20 caps for France, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
"It's a tool that worked in banking, in investment, it should work in sport."
The platform, which also offers contacts with luxury product suppliers, enables professional athletes to recommend agents and companies, just like TripAdvisor allows customers to rate and recommend hotels.
"Often (as a professional athlete) when you sign a contract, you have surprises, and often those are bad surprises," said Saha.
"The young athletes need good people to help them make the right choices and decisions."
Axis Stars, whose members are only professional sportspeople, also helps athletes to better, and more quickly, understand the contracts they are about to sign.
"It means that players can feel less under pressure when they are asked to sign a contract within a couple of days," said Saha who works as a mentor on the platform along with athletes such as Chelsea striker Didier Drogba and French tennis ace Gael Monfils.
Saha would like to develop the model, but feels sporting authorities should get more involved.
"It's nice that they (governing bodies) are saying it's a great tool and that they want a transparent sport, but now it is time to act," he said.
"Everyone believes the platform is great but they don't make the efforts to help us model it and improve it, as and when required.
"They must help us change the atmosphere; even more so now after FIFA's recent announcement around the reform of regulations related to agents," Saha said, explaining that players will now be more exposed to potential crooks.
Under FIFA reforms, agents are now known as "intermediaries", who are not licensed with FIFA but just need to register with their national FA.