Superagent who made a fortune doing transfer deals for world’s best footballers

When Mino Raiola earned a reported £41 million (NZ$80 million) for brokering the then world-record £89 million transfer of Paul Pogba from Juventus to Manchester United in 2016, some felt it appropriate that the ‘‘superagent’’ was reported to have spent the proceeds on a house once owned by Al Capone.

Rapacious agents, accused of manipulating their naive young clients to move clubs in order to claim lucrative commissions, were nothing new in football. Yet in recent years the most notorious superagent of them all created awhole new ball game.

Despite being one of the most powerful men in football, Raiola, who has died of lung disease, took pride in looking as though he had just attended a summer frat party: slightly dishevelled, he often wore shorts and a T-shirt, and sported stubble and sunglasses as he conducted business on amobile phone by a swimming pool in a sunny clime.

The scruffy, short and pot-bellied Italianborn Raiola cut a curious figure next to the athletic young men he represented. Yet to the footballers, unused to their sudden riches, he was a Svengali and a ‘‘one-stop shop’’. Raiola would advise them on where to buy a lavish apartment and which exclusive restaurants to dine in. When they were arrested or faced lurid tabloid headlines after a ‘‘kiss-and-tell’’, Raiola would act as consigliere.

In the case of Pogba, Raiola had first incurred the wrath of Manchester United’s then manager Sir Alex Ferguson in 2012. ‘‘Fergie’’ had been quietly nurturing the 19-year-old Frenchman when Raiola blew his cover and demanded that Pogba be paid a vastly improved contract in the face of interest in the player from Juventus. Unfazed by the celebrated Scottish manager who knew how to be intimidating when he needed to be, Raiola had the temerity to tell Ferguson that ‘‘my chihuahuas wouldn’t sign’’ the contract that United were offering. Ferguson called Raiola a ‘‘t...’’ and refused to agree to the new terms. Pogba moved to Juventus that summer and Raiola made a hefty commission.

‘‘I distrusted him from the moment I met him,’’ said Ferguson, who was already well used to dealing with agents but had yet to deal with one as abrasive as Raiola, who had a reputation for throwing chairs to make his point.

Four years later, with Ferguson having retired, Pogba returned toManchester United with Raiola claiming his clientwould ‘‘dominate for 10 years. He is United’s lost son.’’ This summer Pogba is expected to leave Old Trafford after six disappointing years marked by fallings-out with managers, and long absences from the team. Raiola was expected to profit handsomely from a deal with Real Madrid or Paris Saint-Germain.

More hard-headed observers claimed that Raiola was cleverly fulfilling a need. He was obsessed with football, using his knowledge of the game, and contactswithin it, to identify future superstars. Second, he was a brilliant linguist who could negotiate with a humorous patter in English, Italian, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Dutch. Third, he was aworkaholic who operated as a one-man band apart from using the services of his Brazilian lawyer. Finally, he had business pedigree, having made his first million at the age of 19 when he bought and sold aMcDonald’s franchise. Raiola may have been unscrupulous and even greedy, but many claimed that the real folly lay with the big clubs, especially in England, who Raiola had shaken money out of so adeptly for so long.

Carmine Raiola was born in Nocera Inferiore, Salerno, southern Italy. His father was amechanic but when Mino was a baby the family moved to the Netherlands, where his parents first opened a sandwich shop, then a pizzeria and finally an upmarket restaurant.

From the age of 11, Mino worked as a waiter. By 16 he was negotiating with banks on behalf of his father who could not speak Dutch. At the same time he was playing in the youth team of Haarlem FC. At 18 he had stopped playing football and was managing Haarlem’s youth team. Meanwhile, he studied law for two years and was appointed sporting director at Haarlem. He hatched a plan to sign a young player called Dennis Bergkamp, but his brash mannermade him enemies in the Haarlem boardroom and he left the club.

He began assisting the Dutch football agent Rob Jansen, acting as an interpreter when Bergkamp was transferred from Ajax to Inter Milan in 1993. While working for Jansen he built up his own client list of Dutch players.

He first met young Swedish forward Zlatan Ibrahimovic in 2001. Raiola told the 20-yearold Ajax player ‘‘sell all your cars and watches’’ because he would soon be acquiring much more expensive ones. Ibrahimovic would go on to seal big-money moves to Juventus, Inter Milan, Barcelona, AC Milan, PSG and, inevitably, Manchester United. He would portray Raiola as a sort of mafioso, and in recent years the superagent was investigated by the Italian football authorities for ‘‘irregularities’’.

This summer Raiola had been expecting to earn a great deal more than 10% in brokering the transfer of Erling Haaland from Borussia Dortmund to Manchester City, a club that had previously vowed never to do business with him because of an incident years before in which he and the club’s manager, Pep Guardiola, nearly came to blows. Had he lived, Raiolawould have been in line to earn £47m in fees and commission from the Haaland deal. And he would have been entirely unconcerned at the negative headlines. -

‘‘I distrusted him from the moment I met him.’’ Sir Alex Ferguson on Mino Raiola