Mino Raiola is dead. Football loses one of its most influential player agents – and a highly argumentative character.
Mino Raiola was feared and reviled more than once by disgruntled football managers. Quarrels and confrontation were two main motives of a short life – and yet the career of the notorious consultant, including BVB striker Erling Haaland, also offers an almost romantic trait.
Carmine Raiola literally made it from rags to riches. He passed away on Saturday at the age of 54 after a long illness. International football loses one of its great pullers.
“It is with infinite sadness that we bid farewell to the most amazing football agent ever,” read his family’s statement, posted on Raiola’s verified Twitter account: “Mino fought to the end with the same vigor he had defended our players at the negotiating table.”
Haaland posted a photo of him and Raiola on Instagram. “The best,” wrote the Norwegian, adding a red heart.
Italian football mourns the loss of Mino Raiola
“Football loses the emperor of football transfers, one of the most powerful, richest and most controversial football managers in the world,” read the headline Corriere della Sera. “Raiola, who started out as a pizzeria in the Netherlands, invented the phenomenon of the top players who got richer with every club change,” said the Gazzetta dello Sport.
“Fate deprived Raiola of the chance to personally manage the transfer of Norwegian striker Haaland,” according to the Turin daily La Stampa. Alf-Inge Haaland, father of the BVB striker, described Raiola as the best football manager ever.
“I am heartbroken. Mino was a friend and a person of high quality and competence. We have experienced many positive moments of working together, although we also had some arguments, but Mino was always correct,” commented Inter’s managing director Giuseppe Marotta.
“I have many memories of Mino, especially the double transfer of Paul Pogba, with the move from Manchester United to Juventus and from Juventus to Manchester United. A great masterpiece in which Raiola played a major role. The world of football is losing a great professional who was often critical of the system, but his criticism was always constructive in the sense of better football,” said Marotta.
Mino Raiola: hoax caused a stir
False reports about the death of the Italian caused a lot of excitement last Thursday, at which point Raiola was still fighting for his life in Milan’s San Raffaele hospital.
In Italy, Spain, Germany, England, Scandinavia and other parts of the world there was a lot of excitement, it wasn’t just about any player agent. Raiola was probably the most controversial, but almost certainly the most successful of his profession.
Mino Raiola: It all started in a pizzeria
It all started in one Pizzeria at the gates of Amsterdam. Her parents emigrated to the Netherlands from southern Italy in 1968 when Raiola was just one year old. They then ran a restaurant in Haarlem, and the son helped out, cleaning, washing dishes and bringing the food.
Much later, Raiola, the player agent, was also known as “il pizzaiolo”, the pizza maker. According to his own statement, he never stood at the stove himself.
Instead, he already had an eye on the finances of the business as a young adult, also studied law for a few semesters and learned numerous foreign languages - Raiola paved the way for his promotion, and the pizzeria became the launch pad.
Because she was also popular with prominent football representatives. And so Raiola made his first contacts in the business early on, in which he would later earn millions.
The small HFC Haarlem appointed him sports director in the early 1990s, and a little later he was involved as an agent in his first transfer: Dutch international Bryan Roy moved from Ajax Amsterdam to Foggia. It was a comparatively tranquil start.
Because in the decades that followed, exceptional players such as Haaland, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Paul Pogba and Gianluigi Donnarumma placed their multi-million dollar careers in Raiola’s hands.
Players admired his business tactics, clubs feared them. Sir Alex Ferguson, legendary Manchester United boss, once called Raiola a “bastard” for convincing Pogba to join Juventus on a free transfer.
Raiola also offended in Dortmund when it came to the Haaland transfer. In the end, BVB sports director Michael Zorc must have “really hated him,” said Raiola once at Sport1, and there’s a reason for that: “I’m ready to go to war for my players. I’m ready to do everything for them . As for my sons.”