Mino Raiola - An agent's perspective

The unfortunate passing of polarising super agent Mino Raiola last week will have a huge impact on the football market this summer. I was asked during a lecture in 2021 whether I agreed with the statement that 'super agent' Mino Raiola was a parasite and bad for football.

Here was my answer: 

There is a nuanced answer to this which needs to acknowledge all of the stakeholders and perspectives involved.

On the one hand, the polarising Raiola undeniably represented some of the best players in football. By that metric, he is one of the best football agents in the world. Similarly in terms of contracts secured, he has negotiated some of the most financially lucrative contracts in history, so again would be near the top of the list. But he was also one of the most controversial figures in the game that attracted a lot of negative publicity.

Why he didn't enjoy the same positive public image of important agents such as Jorge Mendes, for example, is that whilst many agents deliver value to their clients through building with players and clubs alike, Raiola seemed uninterested by the latter, unfazed by negative publicity, and was focused purely on the best outcome for his clients to the detriment of any party who's interests weren't aligned. I can imagine Raiola was difficult to deal with from a club's perspective because he was so ruthless to that agenda.

The media and ensuing public opinion focused on the huge sums he was paid, which was framed as him taking money out of the game. I think the Paul Pogba deals are a good example of the ways he operated that caused such negative opinion of him. Pogba ran down his contract at Manchester United and left with training compensation only due to the club; Sir Alex Ferguson was openly critical of this and it was considered a huge slight to the club which had invested so much in his development. This was fuelled by the fact the club was Manchester United, a well run, global club with a world class manager and CEO, viewed through the aperture of being manipulated by a greedy agent and/or player. Particularly when it became known that Raiola secured himself a large % of the future transfer fee in the process, an element that was amplified when the next deal took him back to Manchester United. 

When viewed as a zero sum game, it is arguably true that Raiola had engineered a situation that had taken a vast sum of money from the club and exorbitantly lined his own pockets in the process. However, if you look at this through the Raiola's remit of securing the best contracts for his client, and the perspectives of the player, the agent and the new club Juventus, this was a successful deal. A win-win to use a common platitude. Any club would be willing to take a player as talented and young as Pogba was back then, for relatively little cost, have him positively impact their team for several seasons (they won several Serie A & Coppa Italia titles during his time at the club), and sell on at a huge profit further down the line; so of course they'd be willing to pay the agent who engineered this deal a bigger than normal agent's fee, and a minority share of the profit. In many other industries this type of deal set up would be considered par for the course. 

For the avoidance of doubt, I'm filling in the blanks in a complex picture to form a more pragmatic rounded perspective, I'm not saying I particularly agree with this way of working, and it's not a style that I employ. I also think it's very difficult to maintain this strategy over an extended period of time, as burning so many bridges will, for the most part, make it harder to do business over the long term.

What is undoubtedly true is that, as loved by his players as he was, and as disliked by many clubs and fans, the football world has lost one of the biggest dealmakers in the history of football.