From managing pop sensation Dua Lipa to Everton's rising star Nathan Patterson! TaP23 are football's newest agency - and determined to shake up the industry from the inside out

The white walls of TaP Music are smothered in platinum, gold and silver records from Ellie Goulding, Dua Lipa and more. There’s a cabinet that’s ran out of real estate because it’s brimming with awards from the Grammys, Brits and other shiny souvenirs from illustrious evenings.

It is a space in which you are likelier to see Lana Del Rey than Adam Lallana, or Leigh-Anne than Leo Messi, or Gala than Gazza – those three singer-songwriters counted amongst the clientele of this music management company with other offices in Los Angeles, New York and Sydney.

Soon, however, room will need to be allocated for a whole new genre of memorabilia. Framed shirts from footballers, their signatures blurred in the sweat. Man of the Match awards. Boots in glass boxes, complete with crusty dry mud.

Mail Sport is here at these headquarters in central London, to be introduced to football’s newest agency, TaP23. 

Unveiled on Thursday, it is music management meets football, an expansion from one culture into another and a holistic collaboration being overseen by two co-founders in Ben Mawson and Paul Dalglish.

Mawson is a renowned leader in talent representation for some of the planet’s most popular musicians and if we dropped any more names than we already have, we’d need a broom to sweep them up. Dalglish is the son of the one and only Kenny with a C.V. which shows his wide range as a player, head coach, general manager, club president for Miami FC in the MLS and now, officially, a football agent.

‘I don't like the word “agent” actually,’ says Mawson. ‘You think “football agent” and you get those stereotypes. It suggests a very transactional job, at its worst popping up twice a year. “I’ll move you, we’ll get some more money, then on we go”. For me, management is every day.’

Mail Sport once spoke to a club owner who described intermediaries as being as ‘slimy as the stuff between the wallpaper and the wall’. TaP23 are pledging to do it differently, explaining that the responsibility of representing a footballer can no longer fall on a single person’s shoulders.

‘When you think of TaP Music, you don’t think of Ben, of Ed (Millett, Mawson’s fellow founder), you think of a team-based approach,’ Dalglish says. ‘In football, it’s got to be the same. Footballers need a management team. Not an agent. It's impossible now for one person to do everything. Look at the staff that clubs have. Agencies have to do the same.’

You cannot merely have a manager, in other words. You need the whole backroom staff, specialists for every demand from contract negotiations to money management and social media to philanthropy. Asked for a specific example of their alternative bespoke approach, Dalglish cites how they provide players with individual coaching, as Mawson says: ‘Even the top singers in the world have vocal coaches.’

Dalglish continues: ‘But in football, how many agents actually provide a service for players to improve? Two years ago, we sat down and we asked, “What does the modern-day footballer need?” and we built that team before we started bringing in clients.’

Previously, anyone in England with £500 and no criminal record could become an agent registered by the Football Association. Now, you have to pass a FIFA examination in order to gain a licence, with surprisingly low pass rates due to the difficulty of the 20 questions picked at random from a pool of 200.

Everton’s Nathan Patterson, Celtic’s Liam Scales and TaP23's other clientele will be glad to know their agents passed at the first attempt, with Pat Devlin heading up their Irish office and Grant Smith in charge in Scotland.

‘We love football, we’re in favour of the regulations and we want to bring ethics into it as well,’ Dalglish says. ‘I can give you real-life examples. Standard in the agency world is five per cent commission. The player wanted to come to the club. The agent said, “We will walk away from the deal unless I get 10 per cent”. I said, "We've got a club policy, we only pay five”. He said, “Well we’re not doing the deal”.

’There was another situation where there was a player that I was trying to sign who was a real family friend. He wanted to come to the club. The agent refused because he had an agreement with a club that he had a relationship with and wouldn’t allow it. It's got to be transparent. It's got to be ethical. You've got to give them the best advice you can.’

We joke that they’re the new Posh and Becks – one half music, the other football – but this partnership goes back to 1986 when Dalglish Snr had led Liverpool to the English title as player-manager. Naturally, they’re both Reds.

‘My dad was a psychiatrist at Ashworth hospital up in Liverpool,’ Mawson explains on how they first met. ‘So we moved there from London and on the first day of school, for some reason, they gave me this guy to look after me and we became best buddies.’

Dalglish says: ‘Have you seen that ITV programme G’wed? There’s a kid from London who gets to moved up to Liverpool and there’s a kid who gets to look after him.'

Sadly, that show is not based on this duo, but they feel this is only the beginning of their story. TaP23 say they do not want to sign up anyone and everyone, and will only agree terms with a footballer if they suit their strategic style.

‘We don't want to get too big,’ Mawson says. ‘When you become too big, when you have hundreds or thousands of players, it's hard to give them that individual dedicated service. That's been a challenge on the music side, too. When you start to be successful, you get more opportunities and if you're not careful, you can fatten out quickly. The risk is you dilute. With talent, you've got to pick the right ones. We want to be the best, not the biggest.’