Mino Raiola

Carmine "Mino" Raiola [ˈmino ˈrajola]; born 4 November 1967) is an Italian-born Dutch football agent representing a number of well known players, including Manchester United players Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Paul Pogba and Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Italian striker Mario Balotelli,^[1] and Everton striker Romelu Lukaku. He was also for many years the agent of former Czech star midfielder Pavel Nedvěd.^[2]

Biography

Raiola was born in 1967 in Nocera Inferiore, Salerno, in southern Italy.^[3] He moved to the Dutch city of Haarlem a year later with his parents.^[4] Growing up in the Netherlands, his father opened a successful restaurant business where Raiola spent his younger years working as a waiter.^[5] At the same time, he obtained his high school diploma and attended University for two years, enrolling in the Faculty of Law.^[6] He speaks seven languages: Italian, English, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Dutch.^[3]

He started playing football for the youth team of HFC Haarlem, but stopped at eighteen years old and in 1987 he became head of the youth of the team.^[3] After a brief venture as a player and administrator, Raiola remained involved in the football world, this time as a football agent. He began working at Sports Promotions, a sports agent company, and assisted in the transfers several high-profile Dutch players to Italian clubs, including Ajax player Bryan Roy (in 1992 to Foggia), Marciano Vink (in 1993 to Genoa), Wim Jonk and Dennis Bergkamp (both in 1993 to Internazionale) and Michel Kreek (in 1994 to Padua). After a while, however, he decided to leave the company and start his own business. His first independent big transfer was Pavel Nedvěd's signing from Sparta Prague for Lazio following his impressive performance at UEFA Euro 1996, where Nedvěd's Czech Republic reached the tournament final.

Just after the turn of the century, Raiola came to Ajax with his own business. It earned him several new clients, including then-young stars Zlatan Ibrahimović, Mido and Maxwell. On 31 August 2004, the last day of the summer transfer window, Raiola successfully negotiated Ibrahimović's transfer to Juventus for €16 million. Maxwell and Zdeněk Grygera, however, decided not to renew their contracts with Ajax, allowing both players to leave on free transfers. After these transfers, Ajax for a long time did no business with Raiola.

Even without cooperation from Ajax, however, Raiola continued with a string of successful transfers: he negotiated Ibrahimović's later transfers to Inter (in 2006) and Barcelona (in 2009), while from 2010 to 2011, Raiola was involved in five Milan transfers, including Ibrahimović, Robinho, Mark van Bommel, Urby Emanuelson and Dídac Vilà, despite not all being his clients.

More than 20 players playing in European leagues are represented by Raiola.^[7] He currently resides in Monaco. In 2008, he was involved in two disciplinary hearings instigated by the Federazione Italiana Giuoco Calcio (FIGC) for transfer irregularities.^{[8][9][10][11]}

In August 2016, after closing the world football transfer record of Paul Pogba to Manchester United, Raiola made a reported €25 million off of Pogba's €105 million transfer; he bought the Miami villa of one of America's most famous mob bosses, Al Capone for €9 million.^[12]

Clients

• Zdeněk Grygera (2009–present^[13])
• Zlatan Ibrahimović (2003^[14][15] - present)
• Martin Jol (football manager)
• Felipe Mattioni (2008^[16]–present)
• Mario Balotelli (2010^[17]–present)
• Maxwell (2002^[18]–present)
• Pavel Nedvěd (2003^[2][14]–present)
• Kerlon (2007^[19]–present)
• Henrikh Mkhitaryan (2013–present^[20])
• Paul Pogba (?–present)
• Étienne Capoue (2013–present^[21])
• Blaise Matuidi (2013–present^[22])
• Gregory van der Wiel (?–present^[22])
• Romelu Lukaku (2015–present)
• Gianluigi Donnarumma
• Moise Kean

Selection of transfer deals brokered

References