After the confusion on Friday, the football world now has sad certainty: player agent Mino Raiola is dead. The Italo-Dutchman was one of the most powerful people in the sport. How did that happen?
Mino Raiola’s final message, believed to be personal, came on Thursday afternoon: “My current state of health, for anyone who wants to know: pissed off that I’ve been pronounced dead for the second time in four months.” Dubious media reports had reported that the most powerful player advisor in the world had died.
By then, Mino Raiola had been in a Milan hospital for over four months. The 54-year-old was admitted to San Raffaele hospital in January and reportedly had to undergo emergency surgery.
The social media were overflowing with condolences from all sides because of the original death notice, fans were dismayed – mind you: for a player advisor whose profession still does not enjoy the very best reputation in public.
And only Mino Raiola could do it. Because his story is one of the most wondrous rises in football history.
“Mino would have swept everyone away”
Anyone who wants to understand the 54-year-old and his career will inevitably end up with one of his most loyal companions: “It’s the worst argument we’ve ever had,” Zlatan Ibrahimovic recalls in his book “Adrenaline. What I haven’t told you yet.” over a disagreement with his longtime advisor. In 2019 it was about the future of the Swede at his former club LA Galaxy.
“I decide to stay in America for another year and that’s why I’m negotiating the contract extension. All alone and without telling Mino what he’s so upset about,” writes Ibrahimovic. “If Mino had entered negotiations after my first year in America, he would have asked for everything, including shares in the Lakers and a bike. Mino was too strong for the people there. He would have swept them away, destroyed everything, and I would have no longer played in MLS.”
Two like bad luck and brimstone: Zlatan Ibrahimovic (left) and star consultant Mino Raiola have been connected for decades. (Source: ANP/imago images)
It is a congenial duo that has been working together for 20 years: here the Swedish-born son of Bosnian parents, who grew up in the most difficult circumstances between father and mother and made it to world stardom. As the son of an Italian family raised in the Netherlands, whose success is based on the opening of what Raiola says is the first Italian restaurant in the country. Who rose to become the most powerful adviser in the football world. Equally famous as notorious, loved as hated.
Father Raiola is the defining figure
“Brother, friend, advisor – he was and is the best,” wrote Zlatan Ibrahimovic on Facebook in December 2020. At that time, Raiola had just been named “Consultant of the Year” by the Italian “Tuttosport”. Ibrahimovic, Paul Pogba, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Mathijs de Ligt, Romelu Lukaku, Mario Balotelli and Erling Haaland – a remarkable number of the greatest in their sport swear by Raiola.
When he was just one year old, the Salerno family relocated from picturesque Campania in southern Italy to Haarlem in the Netherlands, just a few kilometers from Amsterdam. In his youth, young Carmine, whom everyone just calls “Mino”, waits tables in the “Palladium”, his father’s restaurant. He has to work hard, “he worked seven days a week,” Raiola once recalled. “I learned from him not to give up.” Because Raiola senior is also successful: “First a sandwich shop, then a pizzeria, then a fine restaurant,” the proud son once described. If he is now sometimes reviled as a “pizza baker”, this is based on those very first steps into professional life.
“Then do it better”
He came into contact with football early on, playing in the youth teams at HFC Haarlem, but the young midfielder realizes that it won’t be enough for a great career of his own.
In the meantime, in his father’s restaurant, he is showing ever stronger traits of an organizer: “I became a middleman because the Dutch guests didn’t understand the Italian way.” Even if there were difficulties with deliveries or other organizational matters, he was told: “Mino, you’ll take care of it.” That’s how he learned to “solve problems.”
Unconventional duo: Raiola (right) and Mario Balotelli in the stands in 2010. (Source: Inside photo/imago images)
The president of HFC Haarlem is a regular guest in the restaurant, Raiola constantly annoys him with harsh criticism of the club’s management, until at some point he says on a whim: “Then do it better.” And to his surprise, the wet and bold young man accepts the challenge. When he was just in his early 20s, he became sporting director of what was then the second division club. It is the definitive start of his career in professional football. He later becomes self-employed and attracts interest through connections and clever deals. His advantage over the years: Raiola speaks several languages, in addition to Dutch and Italian, German, English, French, Spanish and Portuguese.
Pavel Nedved as a great discovery
A number of well-known Dutch players will move to Italy in the coming years, Serie A is the dominant league in Europe at the time. In 1992 national player Bryan Roy switched from Ajax to Foggia for the equivalent of 2.5 million euros, it was Raiola’s first major transfer. Raiola was also involved in the transfer of Dennis Bergkamp and Wim Jonk from Amsterdam to Inter 1993. Confirmed by the success, Raiola finally becomes self-employed as a player consultant in the mid-1990s. The name of his later company: “Maguire Tax & Legal”, named after the sports manager played by Tom Cruise from the film of the same name.
His first really “own” transfer: Pavel Nedved’s move from Sparta Prague to Lazio Rome after the Czech had attracted attention with strong performances at the 1996 European Championship. “Five years later, Juve then paid almost 77 million lire (approx. 39 million euros, editor’s note) for him,” Raiola once said with pride.
Great guy: Raiola (left) and Pavel Nedved in 2003. (Source: LaPresse/imago images)
In the early 2000s, he arranged for the then 22-year-old Zlatan Ibrahimovic to move from Ajax to Juventus for 16 million euros at the time. To date, transfers to FC Barcelona, Inter Milan, AC Milan and Paris St. Germain have added 145.3 million. The 105 million that Manchester United put on the table in 2016 to bring back the once spurned Pogba from Juventus? Not possible without Raiola. Likewise the transfer of de Ligt, whose move from Amsterdam to Turin was orchestrated by him for 85.5 million. The next giant company should be Haaland in 2022, the transfer of which could go beyond the scope.
Ibrahimovic? “Totally stupid”
In the past few years, Raiola has also been causing more and more irritation and does not shy away from arguments. He openly takes on Fifa, describes the world association as a “corrupt shop” and teases that Pep Guardiola “doesn’t have the balls to face me”. His methods are frowned upon, and over the years colleagues have liked to describe him as a disgrace to their profession.
Legendary coach Sir Alex Ferguson, himself not at a loss for open words, once raged against the “bastard” in the Pogba transfer confusion. “The sports directors hate me? Why? At least I’ve never sat with a gun on the table during negotiations,” said Raiola Sport1 last December, “I just know very well what my players are worth and what the clubs need. If they hate me, that’s the greatest compliment I can get. Then I’ll do something good.”
The players he looks after, on the other hand, appreciate his open nature, his unconditional commitment to their interests (and certainly his own – he is said to collect commissions in the millions). Ibrahimovic is said to have once chosen Raiola as an agent when Raiola bluntly told him he was “completely stupid”.
The market has changed
Raiola is aware of his influence and his formative role in current world football – but deals with it unpretentiously, albeit with great satisfaction: “I’ve always tried to renew the industry with my contracts,” he explains in an interview with Sport1. “Everyone who is successful is doing something that changes the market.” He and other advisors “created a second game in the last 20 years” away from the lawn. “It’s the Calcio Mercato (Italian “Transfermarkt”, editor’s note). Normally it was like this: you talk about the game for four or five days. Today you talk about the game for two days and about business for five days .”
Only one could do it. Mino Raiola died on Saturday at the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan.