HOW DOES JORGE MENDES MUSCLE IN ON ALL THOSE BIG DEALS?
HE’S THE AGENT FOR MOURINHO, PEPE, RONALDO, DI MARIA,FALCAO... AND DE GEA
BY THE time Real Madrid got down to the nitty-gritty with Manchester United in the negotiations for the transfer of David de Gea, it had been another good day in the life of Jorge Mendes.
The self-styled super agent — who boasts a stable of approaching 100 top- class footballers, with transfer values closing in on £1billion — had already been in the thick of the action over the astonishing £58million transfer of Monaco forward Anthony Martial.
De Gea should have been another slam dunk, easy money for a man who picks up the phone to speak to Real Madrid’s president Florentino Perez up to 20 times a day.
Instead he has an unhappy client, a goalkeeper who dreamed of walking out at the Bernabeu but whose deal collapsed in the final, chaotic hours of Monday evening.
Mendes is used to getting his way, but the latest rumour about the glitch in De Gea’s aborted move to Spain is over the size of the agent’s commission.
Standard terms are five per cent on a player’s salary but it is not uncommon to negotiate a higher figure with the buying club, especially for a galactico. So did Mendes, the game’s ultimate wheelerdealer, get greedy after concluding a deal following his extraordinary — and lucrative — intervention in United’s pursuit of Martial?
United’s chief executive Ed Woodward had been making steady progress over the weekend to bring Martial, just 19, to Old Trafford for a relatively modest fee of around £21.6m.
That was before the deal was jeopardised, with word filtering in to United that Arsenal, short of a striker and having finally given up hope of landing Karim Benzema, had entered the bidding. Apparently Martial favoured Arsenal, wanting to work with the great Arsene Wenger and to emulate the achievements of their record goalscorer Thierry Henry.
United, beaten at Swansea on Sunday and desperate for a striker to assist Wayne Rooney, agreed to pay £58m all in. Yesterday sources at Arsenal claimed Wenger was aware of Martial’s potential availability and is an admirer of his talent, but did not at any stage enter the bidding.
Those who know the 49-year-old Mendes, the associates who have seen him at work over the past 20 years during his career as a football agent, attest to a hyperactive character when the wheels start turning in a deal. He had the same appetite when he was selling bikes as a kid in Lisbon, racing around to try to bring extra money intoit theth family home for his mother and father.
He has been doing deals, in ever grander settings, ever since. This summer alone, he ended Angel di Maria’s misery by moving him to Paris Saint-Germain in a transfer worth £44m, clinched the £32m deal to take Valencia defender Nicolas Otamendi to Manchester City, along with the sale of Martial from Monaco to United that could cost up to £58m. The commissions from those deals, whether he brokered them or acted as the agent for the player, will run into many millions over the course of their contracts.
By the close of play on Monday, transfer deadline day in Spain, Mendes expected negotiations to be complete for De Gea to realise his dream of becoming the firstchoice keeper at Real Madrid.
As the Portugal defender Pepe explained in a TV documentary, Jorge Mendes: Super Agent: ‘He can make things happen that you never think or expect to happen, such as my move to Real Madrid.’
Only this time Mendes could not get the deal with Real across the line and it may be that his complicated relationship with Perez was part of the problem during those final, tense negotiations.
Whatever happened, this is a major embarrassment to Mendes.
During Jose Mourinho’s eventful spell at Real Madrid, Perez became increasingly concerned by the number of clients at the club represented by Mendes’s organisation GestiFute.
Mourinho, along with Cristiano Ronaldo, Pepe and Fabio Coentrao, were among the GestiFute clients at Real Madrid.
According to The Special One, a biography of Mourinho written by Spanish journalist Diego Torres, there was a period when Mendes had his own office at Real’s Valdebebas training ground.
It led to strained relations with Perez, but Mendes has so much influence inside the dressing room at the Bernabeu that they have patched things up.
At Mendes’s wedding to Sandra Barbosa in Foz do Douro, Porto, last month, where Cristiano Ronaldo was the best man and Sir Alex Ferguson was among the guests, Perez was also present.
This time the deal for De Gea could not be saved, with various theories circulating as to why the United keeper did not complete his
Did the super agent get greedy over De Gea?
move to Real before the deadline. It is a big miss for Mendes, particularly given his reputation within the game; he has enemies but he gets deals done. According to Ronaldo, who was also interviewed for the documentary, he is ‘honest, sincere and professional’.
Mourinho, another who appeared in the toecurling TV tribute to the football agent, claims clubs ‘like him, they trust him’.
It is not unknown for Ronaldo or Mourinho to pick up the phone to a prospective client on Mendes’s behalf, to assure them that they are in the right hands if they sign for the Portuguese agent.
Mourinho added: ‘Sometimes players are led into shady paths — he leads them to safety.’
Falcao, who has found a new home at Chelsea following his unsuccessful spell on loan at Old Trafford last season (loan fee to Monaco: £7m), claims to owe his career to Mendes.
He spends most days juggling his two mobile phones and when he runs out of time, or the deal doesn’t suit him or his client, his secretary will call a club back.
When the Brazilian midfielder Anderson was being touted around Europe last season, one mid-ranking Premier League club showed interest in the former Manchester United midfielder. They eventually got a reply, via Mendes’s PA.
He has a long- standing relationship with United, stretching back to 2002, when he brokered the deal for Ronaldo’s move from Sporting Lisbon.
In 2010 he gained notoriety when United agreed to pay Vitoria de Guimaraes £7.2m for the unknown Bebe, of which £2.89m was then paid to Mendes. Bebe made just two Premier League appearances for United.
Mendes fries the big fish now, with the curious relationship between Monaco and Valencia, where his friends Dmitry Rybolovlev and Peter Lim own the respective teams, raising more than a few eyebrows at senior level.
When Valencia played Monaco in a Champions League qualifier, Mendes had been involved in the negotiations over contracts or transfers for eight players on each team.
Last week, despite a signed document from Monaco defender Aymen Abdennour confirming his preference to join Chelsea, Mendes brokered the defender’s move to Valencia. Intriguingly, Lim became Ronaldo’s commercial agent in June.
Mendes, who was unavailable for comment, has a quirky sense of fair play and it certainly came as a surprise to the Portuguese agent Artur Fernandes when he received an invitation to Mendes’s wedding last month. Just weeks before, Fernandes had lost Southampton captain Jose Fonte to Mendes.
Fonte remains at St Mary’s, angling for a new contract to put him in line with the club’s top earners or waiting for a move to a top club at the end of the season.
Now that he is working with Mendes, that day will come.