11 things you probably didn’t know about super agent Mino Raiola

News broke on Thursday afternoon of the death of high profile football agent, Mino Raiola, at 54, following an unknown illness.

The football agent was hospitalised in Milan back in January and underwent a very delicate surgery but the nature of the illness was not revealed.

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Reports said at the time that the condition was not life-threatening and that Raiola would begin a period of rehabilitation at home, however, some reports in Italy have claimed that the football agent has died.

Here are a few things to know about Mino Raiola:

• Raiola was born in 1967 in Nocera Inferiore, Salerno, in southern Italy.

• He spent his younger years working as a waiter. At the same time, he obtained his high school diploma and attended university for two years, enrolling in the Faculty of Law.

• He started playing football for the youth team of HFC Haarlem but stopped at age 18 in 1987 to become head of the youth team.

• After a brief venture as a player and administrator, Raiola became a football agent and he began working at Sports Promotions, a sports agent company and assisted in the transfers of 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 leaving the company and starting 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 final.

• In 2008, he was involved in two disciplinary hearings instigated by the Federazione Italiana Giuoco Calcio (FIGC) for transfer irregularities as part of a wider investigation of professional football by Italian authorities.

• In August 2016, after closing the world record transfer of Paul Pogba to Manchester United, Raiola made a reported €25 million from Pogba’s €105 million transfer; subsequently, he bought the former Miami home of one of America’s most famous mob bosses, Al Capone, for €9 million.

• On 8 May 2019, the Italian Football Federation banned Raiola from acting as an agent representative for three months for undisclosed reasons, while his cousin Vincenzo Raiola was banned for two months. On 10 May, the bans were extended worldwide after the FIFA Disciplinary Committee absorbed the Italian federation’s decisions. On 13 June 2019, after Raiola and his cousin appealed the original ban to the Federal Court of Appeal in Italy, they won, resulting in revoking the three-month ban.

• On 22 January 2020, Raiola was among a number of high profile football agents including Jorge Mendes and Jonathan Barnett who threatened FIFA with legal sanctions following the planned cap on transfer payments.

• Raiola spoke seven languages: Italian, English, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Dutch.

• Some of Raiola’s past clients are Erling Haaland, Zlatan Ibrahimović, Felipe Mattioni, Mario Balotelli, Pavel Nedvěd, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Paul Pogba, Étienne Capoue, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Matthijs de Ligt, Marco Verratti, Hirving Lozano and Romelu Lukaku.