19 Facts About Mino Raiola

Carmine "Mino" Raiola was an Italian-Dutch football agent known for having represented players such as Pavel Nedved, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Paul Pogba and Erling Haaland.

Mino Raiola began his career in the Netherlands in 1992, where he had lived since moving there as a child, helping transfer Dutch players to Italy's Serie A After starting his own agency, he became a renowned super-agent who was involved with many of the most high-profile and expensive transfers of the new millennium.

Mino Raiola was born in 1967 in Nocera Inferiore, Campania, in southern Italy.

Mino Raiola moved to the Dutch city of Haarlem a year later with his parents.

Mino Raiola started playing football for the youth team of HFC Haarlem, but stopped at age 18 in 1987 to become head of the youth team, and later as the clubs' technical director.

Mino Raiola began working at Sports Promotions, a sports agency company, and assisted in the transfers of several high-profile Dutch players to Italian clubs, including Ajax player Bryan Roy, Marciano Vink, Wim Jonk and Dennis Bergkamp, and Michel Kreek.

Zeman wanted a player "who dribbled like Maradona, ran 17 km per game and trained like a fanatic", but Mino Raiola believed such a player did not exist.

Mino Raiola sold the template of Nedved, an "extremist" who "can train harder than you can imagine", to several players throughout his career.

Mino Raiola instigated Nedved's transfer to Juventus in 2001, where he would win the Ballon d'Or in 2003, and resulting in a commission of six billion lira.

Mino Raiola later guided several of Zlatan Ibrahimovic's transfers that led him to being cumulatively the second-most expensive footballer in history by 2016.

On 8 May 2019, the Italian Football Federation banned Mino Raiola from acting as an agent representative for three months for undisclosed reasons, while his cousin Vincenzo Mino Raiola was banned for two months.

Mino Raiola was regularly categorised as being among the richest and most powerful agents in the sport, and upon his death in 2022, Italian newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport described him as "the most powerful, the best, the most discussed".

Mino Raiola described himself as an "altruist" in contrast to fellow agent Jorge Mendes, who he described as an "egoist", due to the differing motivations of both.

Mino Raiola was often characterised as being from the American television programme The Sopranos due to his personality, fashion sense, and attitude, including by Ibrahimovic, and was regularly underestimated due to his appearance.

Mino Raiola's office was based in Monte Carlo and had "no traces of luxury" according to Italian newspaper La Repubblica, and only four employees.

Mino Raiola resided in the principality of Monaco with his family.

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

In January 2022, Mino Raiola was admitted to San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, where he underwent surgery.

Staff of Mino Raiola denied reports he was in intensive care, describing them as "routine checks", and he was discharged ten days later.