Football coach Tommy Wright has been convicted of taking a £5,000 bribe to leak commercial information about players.

The former assistant head coach at Barnsley Football Club was handed an envelope of cash during an undercover investigation by Daily Telegraph reporter Claire Newell in 2016.

The 53-year-old, from Barnsley, denied wrongdoing but was convicted of two charges of accepting a bribe.

Two football agents – Giuseppe “Pino” Pagliara and Dax Price – were both convicted of paying and facilitating a bribe.

The men, 64 and 48 respectively, broke football rules by acting as “third party” owners of players in an attempt to profit when they were sold to other clubs.

Third party ownership arrangements were banned by the Football Association and FIFA in 2015.

After accepting the bribe, Wright is understood to have leaked commercial information about Barnsley players.

Southwark Crown Court heard that some of the players were encouraged to sign up with Pagliara and Price.

Prosecutor Brian O’Neill said the two agents “explicitly discussed the payment of future sums to Mr Wright”.

Wright did not deny accepting the £5,000, paid tax on it and declared it to HMRC.

His lawyer, Lewis Power QC, said his motivation for getting involved with Pagliara and Price was to turn Barnsley into a better club.

A friend of Price, James Hennessy, compared him to Del Boy from Only Fools And Horses, saying: “Dax is never far away from being a millionaire – he was always the next big deal and he always falls flat on his face.”

He said Price was “stupid and naive” and had “absolutely no business sense whatsoever”.

In undercover footage, Pagliara told Ms Newell that football was not for “morally correct people”, as she posed as a businesswoman from a wealthy firm looking to invest in the English game.

Pagliara added: “I go the official way and I go the unofficial way… 99% of the industry is made up of people that, if they weren’t in football, would be selling second-hand cars.”

He claimed that talk of corruption was “grandstanding” to impress Ms Newell.

A date for sentencing is still to be set.

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