Mino Raiola, the persuasive and regularly disputable sports specialist to a few of football’s greatest players, has kicked the bucket. He was 54.
Raiola kicked the bucket after a long sickness, his family affirmed on Saturday. He had been experiencing treatment at Milan’s San Raffaele healing center, where he was gone to by Zlatan Ibrahimović this week. Raiola experienced surgery in January but it was said at the time that it was not life-threatening.
“In infinite sorrow, we share the passing of the most caring and amazing football agent that ever was,” read a post from “The Raiola Family” on his social media accounts.
“Mino fought until the end with the same strength he put on negotiation tables to defend our players. As usual, Mino made us proud and never realised it.”
Raiola was the specialist of stars such as Erling Haaland and Paul Pogba, as well as Ibrahimović.
He was popular for getting his players big-money moves but too drew the fury of football supervisors, counting Alex Ferguson after he arranged Pogba’s exchange from Manchester Joined together to Juventus in 2012.
He moreover managed with Pogba’s return to Joined together in 2016 for a then-world-record charge of 105 million euros (at that point $116m) of which Raiola earned 27m euros ($30m). He was paid millions more by Pogba and Joined together.
Raiola was within the handle of arranging Haaland’s anticipated move absent from Borussia Dortmund this summer, with Manchester City one of a few conceivable goals for the Norwegian starlet.
Raiola too managed the flight of Italy goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma from childhood club AC Milan to Paris Saint-Germain final year. Mario Balotelli was another of his clients.
“Mino touched so many lives through his work and wrote a new chapter in the history of modern football. His presence will forever be missed,” added the announcement of his death.
“Mino’s mission of making football a better place for players will continue with the same passion.”
Italian and international media broadly detailed on Thursday that Raiola had passed on but that was categorically denied to The Related Press by his organization and afterward negated clearly by Raiola himself on social media.
It was moreover wrongly detailed he had kicked the bucket in January when he was taken to the healing center for what was afterward affirmed as “ordinary therapeutic checks that require anesthesia”.
Raiola was born within the southern Italian city of Nocera Inferiore but moved to the Netherlands after less than a year.
He worked as a server in his father’s Italian eatery whereas at tall school and went on to consider law for two a long time at university.
Raiola was a youth group football player and director some time recently beginning his career as a sports operator by helping within the exchange of Dutch players to outside clubs.
He was once in a while distant from discussion or the spotlight — much like a few of the players he spoken to. Raiola compared FIFA to a mafia association in 2013 and called the administering body’s then-president Sepp Blatter a “demented dictator”.
In conjunction with individual “super agents” Jorge Mendes and Jonathan Barnett, Raiola undermined FIFA with lawful activity over plans for a cap on exchange installments in 2020.