Mino Raiola, The Italy-born Dutchman, is the agent of football players including Erling Haaland, Paul Pogba and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and one of the most well-known and elite football agents in the world.
In response to multiple reports in Italy and across the European media outlets that the 54-year-old has died, he tweeted to say he is alive after Dr Alberto Zangrillo from San Raffaele hospital in Milan told the news agency Ansa: “I’m outraged by the phone calls from pseudo-journalists speculating on the life of a man who is fighting to survive.”
Current health status for the ones wondering: pissed off second time in 4 months they kill me. Seem also able to ressuscitate.
— Mino Raiola (@MinoRaiola) April 28, 2022
Mino Raiola, who acts as an intermediary between a club and a player, can boast of lucrative sponsorship deals and influencial client profiles. He’s the football agent of Erling Haaland, Paul Pogba, Matthijs De Ligt and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
Raiola has developed the reputation for earning his clients big contracts, as he closed the then world-record transfer of Pogba to Manchester United in 2016 while also pocketing a reported €25 million (£22m) for himself and is in charge of negotiating Haaland’s summer move away from Borussia Dortmund.
Mino Raiola Life Story
Raiola was born in 1967 in Nocera Inferiore, Salerno, in southern Italy. He moved to the Dutch city of Haarlem with his parents when he was just one.
Growing up in Netherlands, his father opened a pizzeria called Napoli where Raiola spent his younger years working as a waiter and at the same time obtained his high school diploma as he attended university for two years, enrolling in the Faculty of Law.
But Law was not his passion, Football was.
From an early age, Raiola was showing signs of the business acumen as his regular interaction with customers helped hone his communication skills – in both Italian and Dutch – and the youngster was given the responsibility of dealing with any complaints, while working.
Raiola did drop out of his law degree and started playing football for the youth team of HFC Harlem. However, he stopped at age 18 and was appointed Haarlem’s sporting director at just 19 years of age after the club was so impressed by his entrepreneurial skills.
Following his time at Haarlem, he moved into work at sports agent company(Sports Promotions) and assisted in the transfers of high-profile Dutch footballers to Italian clubs, such as Bryan Roy’s move from Ajax to Foggia in 1992, Marciano Vink transfer to Genoa in 1993, and renowned Dutchman Dennis Bergkamp, who moved from the Johan Cruyff Arena to Inter in the same year.{Wikipedia}
After grasping the basics of no less than seven languages: Italian, English, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Dutch, he decided to leave the sports agency to form his own business.
His first major independent transfer was Pavel Nedved’s move from Sparta Prague to Lazio following his stellar performance at Euro 1996 after the Czech helped his nation reach the final. But, his life-changing moment came when he met Zlatan Ibrahimovic which brought him to the lime light.
Raiola’s maturity belied his youth, and so did his shrewdness. By the age of 19, he claimed he was already a millionaire after he had purchased a nearby McDonald’s and sold it to a property developer for a fortune.
In 2020, Forbes claimed Raiola was worth $84.7m and he worked with his brother Vincenzo.
RAIOLA WAS ‘READY TO GO TO WAR’ FOR HIS CLIENTS.
A fierce negotiator who had previously been called a “s*** bag” by former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson, Raiola defended his approach to business back in December when addressing Haaland’s future.
Raiola told Sport1: “I’m ready to go to war for my players. I am ready to do anything, as I would for my sons.
“The sporting directors hate me? How come? I’ve never sat with a gun on the table in negotiations. I just know very well what value my players have and what the clubs need.
“If they hate me, then it’s the biggest compliment for me. Then I’m doing something well.
If they said ‘it’s good that the Raiola advises the player, it’ll be easy for us,’ then I’d have a problem.”
He added: “I love arguments. I love it when I come up with a strategy and use it to overcome my counterpart.
“You’ll never see me in a suit and tie. That’s not me. I am fat and short. People underestimated me for a long time and said, ‘What does he look like? He can’t even get dressed properly’. That was my chance. Now everyone has respect for me.
Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola was never much a fan of Raiola, while legendary Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson offered a brutal assessment of him in his autobiography.
“I distrusted him from the moment I met him,” Ferguson wrote.
” He became Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s agent while he was playing for Ajax, and eventually he would end up representing Pogba, who was only 18 years old at the time.”
“We had Paul under a three-year contract, and it had a one-year renewal option which we were eager to sign. But Raiola suddenly appeared on the scene and our first meeting was a fiasco.”
“He and I were like oil and water. From then on, our goose was cooked because Raiola had been able to ingratiate himself with Paul and his family and the player signed with Juventus.”
Raiola has become notorious, an unpopular representative of the ruthlessly capitalist, financially driven modern game. He played a significant part in Ibrahimović’s later success, acting as an intermediary for a lucrative move to Juventus, followed by later big money deals to join the likes of Barcelona, Inter Milan and Paris Saint-Germain.
The money paid for the Swede throughout his career would have been enough on its own to make the super-agent rich. But money isn’t the main concern for Ibrahimović; he sees Raiola as a friend and mentor, and as the man who taught him a lesson in priorities as a youngster.
So many people have tales to tell about Raiola, both good and bad which Ibrahimovic and Ferguson are part of.
Ibrahimovic is fond of the one about how Raiola burst into a VIP room at Monaco airport to negotiate his transfer from Ajax to Juventus in 2004 wearing Hawaiian shorts and a T-shirt.
Raiola did not care and he does not care. His preoccupation is simply to do the best he can for himself and his players.
“He was completely fearless and prepared to pull any number of tricks, and that sounded good,” Ibrahimovic said, at the time when he was considering whether to appoint Raiola.
“I didn’t want to have another nice boy. I wanted to be transferred and get a good contract.” Ibrahimovic said.
However, not all of Raiola’s clients have proved to be money-spinning success stories as Mario Balotelli, a player with undisputed talent as an example.
The Italian striker who now ply his trades in Turkey failed to reach its potential with Raiola admitting that he shares some of the responsibility in Balotelli failure to reach his potential.
“If Mario Balotelli had Zlatan Ibrahimović’s head, Lionel Messi would have fewer Ballon d’Or awards,” he once said
You have to be ruthless to reach the top and love him or loathe him, Raiola has this in spades.
Mino Raiola’s 73 star-studded clients including Paul Pogba, Erling Haaland and Matthijs de Ligt.
Here’s a complete list of every Raiola client currently playing according to Transfermarkt.
1. Erling Haaland – Borussia Dortmund,
2. Matthijs de Ligt – Juventus,
3. Gianluigi Donnarumma – Paris Saint-Germain
4. Paul Pogba – Manchester United,
5. Marco Verratti – Paris Saint-Germain
6. Stefan de Vrij – Inter Milan
7. Hirving Lozano – Napoli
8. Marcus Thuram – Borussia Monchengladbach
9. Moise Kean – Juventus
10. Ryan Gravenberch – Ajax
11. Donyell Malen – Borussia Dortmund
12. Alessio Romagnoli – AC Milan
13. Konstantinos Manolas – Napoli
14. Owen Wijndal – AZ Alkmaar
15. Alphonse Areola – West Ham United
16. Denzel Dumfries – Inter Milan
17. Henrikh Mkhitaryan – AS Roma
18. Calvin Stengs – Nice
19. Myron Boadu – AS Monaco
20. Justin Kluivert – OGC Nice
21. Mohamed Ihattaren – Sampdoria
22. Andrea Pinamonti – FC Empoli
23. Walter Benitez – OGC Nice
24. Mitchel Bakker – Bayer Leverkusen
25. Luca Pellegrini – Juventus
26. Brian Brobbey – RB Leipzig
27. Pablo Rosario – OGC Nice
28. Mohamed Fares – Genoa
29. Kenny Tete – Fulham
30. Zlatan Ibrahimovic – AC Milan
31. Giacomo Bonaventura – Fiorentina
32. Pantelis Chatzidiakos – AZ Alkmaar
33. Blaise Matuidi – Inter Miami
34. Riccardo Calafiori – AS Roma
35. Vangelis Pavlidis – AZ Alkmaa
36. Philippe Sandler – ESTAC Troyes
37. Rodrigo Ely – Nottingham Forest
38. Joao Paulo – Seattle Sounders
39. Roberto Insigne – Benevento Calcio
40. Derrick Luckassen – Fatih Garagumruk
41. Mario Balotelli – Adana Demirspor
42. Federico Macheda – Panathinaikos Athens
43. Micky van de Ven – Wolfsburg
44. Alessandro Deiola – Cagliari Calcio
45. Wesley – FC Sion
46. Marco Tumminello – Reggina 1914
47. Luciano Narsingh – Free agent
48. Cedric Gondo – US Salernitana
49. Vladimir Weiss – Slovan Bratislava
50. Liam van Gelderon – Ajax
51. Immanuel Pherai – Borussia Dortmund
52. Emre Mor – Fatih Karagumruk
53. Camillo Ciano – Frosinone Calcio
54. Thomas Lam – CSKA Sofia
55. Raul Assencio – AD Alcorcon
56. Fabio Pisacane – US Lecce
57. Xavi Simmons – Paris Saint-Germain
58. Ricardo Kishna – Piacenza Calcio 1919
59. Nicolo Armini – ADO Den Haag
60. Davide Merola – Calcio Foggia 1920
61. Ouasim Bouy – Al Kharaitiyat SC
62. Mattia Vitale – FC Pro Vercelli 1892
63. Eron – Atletico Mineiro
64. Lucas Roggia – Juventude
65. Gustavo Hebling – XV De Piracicaba
66. Hicham Kanis – Panserraikos
67. Ahmed Camara – Opountios Martino
68. Vincenzo Tommasone – FC Rieti
69. Lorenzo Andriuoli – Union Villa Cassano
70. Burak Kardes – Eendracht Termien
71. Felipe Mattioni – free agent
72. Abdel Malek El Hasnaoui – OFC Ostzaan
73. Davide Acampa – Napoli
Mino Raiola to @Sport1 on Haaland future: “We have been thinking for two years. We’ve clear ideas about where Erling should go and of course we look at what the market has to offer. I would be a bad agent if I didn't. We can influence the market with a player like Erling” 🇳🇴 #BVB pic.twitter.com/myJKaLibwr
— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) December 9, 2021
Erling Haaland and Paul Pogba could both be the transfer stories of the year next year, and there will be one man behind the organisation of both transfers should they happen – Mino Raiola
Pogba and Haaland are expected to make two of this summer’s most significant transfers, with the Frenchman available on a free when his contract at United ends and Haaland poised to leave Borussia Dortmund in the summer with Manchester City on alert to sign the Norway striker.
