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A few months ago, Mino Raiola, the super-agent who passed away Saturday, was being bombarded by a litany of complaints from representatives of various clubs against the work of agents and intermediaries: they’re greedy, they suck money out of the game, they’re manipulative.
“Fine, we’re all that, we’re the bad guys,” Raiola said. “But who is it that you call in the middle of the night when you want to sign a player or, even more so, when you need to shift a player? It’s me…and people like me. You say we’re the problem and then you come to us, again and again and again.”
Even now, I can picture Raiola in his snug T-Shirt (he rarely wore suits) and sunglasses reminding clubs that, basically, he was their late night booty-call. Or, to paraphrase the Jack Nicholson character in “A Few Good Men,” Raiola’s existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to some, keeps the game ticking over. They don’t want the truth because deep down, in a place they don’t want to talk about at parties, they want him on that call. They NEED him on that call.
Over three decades, Raiola represented the best players Europe: from Denis Bergkamp and Pavel Nedved, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Mario Balotelli, from Mathijs De Ligt to Paul Pogba, to Erling Haaland and Ryan Gravenberch. He claimed he never signed contracts with his clients; they were free to leave whenever they wanted, but because they were family, they never did. Some have questioned that, but the fact that so few did leave him — and that so many coming through the ranks (Haaland is a prime example) specifically chose him — suggest there’s more than a kernel of truth in it.
Raiola had a reputation as somebody who went to battle for his clients, carving out the best…
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Source : espn
