The most eccentric manager: who is Mino Raiola?

In 2004, Swedish football player Zlatan Ibrahimovic was waiting for his recommended player-manager at the sushi restaurant of the Okura Hotel in Amsterdam. However, as he explains in his book “I Am Zlatan”, the person who came was not a smartly dressed man with a huge gold watch: Jeans underneath, a Nike t-shirt and a belly that looked like it came straight out of The Sopranos TV series! That person was none other than the 36-year-old manager Mino Raiola.

Carmine "Mino" Raiola (4 November 1967 – 30 April 2022) was an Italian-Dutch football agent known for having represented players such as Pavel Nedvěd, Zlatan Ibrahimović, Paul Pogba and Erling Haaland.

Ibrahimovic, who has been playing for the Netherlands' Ajax team for three seasons, was not very happy with his manager, Swedish Anders Carlsson, with whom he worked for several years. Carlsson was a highly regulated person: he never exceeded the speed limit in traffic, and he was always consistent in the transfer negotiation. However, Zlatan needed someone to push the rules a little bit and shake things up.

In front of him was a man who said it with a bang without slurring. Raiola placed four computer printouts on the table. There were statistics of star scorers of that period such as Vieri, Inzaghi, and Trézéguet on the papers. And Zlatan's: "Five goals in 25 games! Do you think I can sell you these stats? Your stats are crap!” This first meeting was so impressive that Zlatan put aside his Porsche and all his other luxuries and devoted himself madly to his work. Already in August of the same year, Raiola organized the transfer of 16 million euros to Juventus. This six-month period was also a springboard in Raiola's managerial career.

Born to an Italian family who immigrated to the Netherlands, Raiola got bored with working at his father's pizzeria in Haarlem at an early age and found himself in football. After being an amateur football player and a manager, he switched to manager in the early 1990s. Moreover, he had a great advantage in this business: his ability to learn languages. Italian was his mother tongue, on top of which he had learned Flemish and English. Four more languages would be added to these.

It was difficult to enter Italy, the most popular football market of those years. As Simon Kuper reported years later, Raiola's attitude towards Turin football director Luciano Moggi was also decisive for the following years. Unable to get Moggi to keep him waiting at the office, Raiola told him to his face that what he did was extremely rude when he met him at the restaurant. Although Moggi said, "You can never sell players in Italy if you don't get along with me," Raiola played a key role in the transfer of Dutch national players such as Bergkamp and Jonk to boots since 1993. After 1995 he started his own business. First, he had Czech star Pavel Nedved transferred to Lazio. He earned his first major commission from the same Nedved's transfer to Juventus in 2001: around $3 million. The manager he was dealing with at Juventus was again Moggi.

Over the years, he has expanded his player portfolio. Over time, big stars such as Pogba, Verratti, Mkhitaryan, and more recently Donnarumma, de Ligt, and Haaland came under his umbrella.

Giant Pogba transfer

He earned a lot of money from transfer negotiations. In 2016, Pogba received commissions from all three parties in the bargain when he transferred from Juventus to Manchester United. Years later, Football Leaks documents would reveal that this figure was 47 million euros. However, what he really accomplished was that he approached every actor he worked with like a father and defended their rights in the best way possible. For all these years, he continued to work with his players without ever having a contract. When asked, he would say, "I cannot chain players like other managers."

He never let go of his basic courtesy. On the other hand, if necessary, for the benefit of his players, he would come into conflict with institutions and clubs without hesitation. For example, in Barcelona, where he thought that although he transferred Ibrahimovic for a record price, he could not benefit from him well, he slammed coach Pep Guardiola for years. Again, due to his attitude in the transfer negotiations, many Italian clubs such as Milan refused to work with him for a while. The removal of goalkeeper Donnarumma from the club for free had infuriated Milan.

He had been at odds with FIFA for a long time. Raiola had pitched himself as a presidential candidate against Sepp Blatter in 2015. Building on the commission he received from the Pogba transfer, FIFA has been pursuing a regulation for several years that seeks to limit player management commissions. Also in 2019, Raiola received a three-month suspension from the Italian Football Federation. FIFA has made this penalty global. After that, Raiola started a legal battle and filed a competition lawsuit in London against FIFA with two other super managers, Jorge Mendes and Jonathan Barnett. Now the biggest question is: What will be the fate of the player portfolio of approximately 800 million euros? It was estimated that Raiola would seek commissions of around 40 million euros from a potential Haaland transfer alone. With only a verbal agreement between them, it is a complete mystery with whom stars like Haaland and Pogba will collaborate now.