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A New Kick Out of Soccer

In 16 years of practice as a partner with the Seattle-based law firm Lane Powell, Jeffrey Gingold, a 1971 Washington and Lee graduate, has specialized in health care and insurance regulation.

Now he has added a new specialty–professional soccer.

Last month, Jeff became one of only 83 Americans to hold a soccer players’ agent license. In order to be licensed by the United States Soccer Federation (USSF), he had to pass an examination by The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). He can now conduct work in organized soccer worldwide. He is one of the first USSF-licensed players’ agents in the Pacific Northwest and will focus on that part of the world (the Seattle Sounders are in major league soccer, for instance).

You can read about Jeff and his new practice in a . It’s a fascinating story, tracing Jeff’s interest in soccer to a 1972 trip to Denmark, and describing his experience as a member of a Peruvian amateur team in a South American league in New Jersey. (“I think the only reason they let me play with them was because I was a lawyer and I could get them out of the immigration holding cell. We never knew which players were going to get busted.”)

Jeff told the Island Review that one reason for his interest in pursuing the agent’s license was the documentary “Soccer’s Lost Boys,” which sheds light on how unscrupulous agents find young West Africans and promise them lucrative contracts with big European teams, only to leave them high and dry when the players don’t make it.

“I want to do this right,” Jeff said in the Island Review story. “I know there are a lot of agents who are doing it right, but there are enough who aren’t doing it right. I think it’s a good time to get in and turn it around to the little extent that I can do it.”

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