In his second Exclusive Column for caughtoffside, Jon Smith, one of football’s first-ever agents and a man who was an integral figure in the forming of the Premier League, discusses all things football, including a tribute to the late Mino Raiola and the confusing world of agents.
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I was deeply saddened to hear about the passing of Mino Raiola over the weekend.
I really enjoyed Mino’s company. He was very bullish. He was aggressive. I will always remember when I organised one of the original FIFA meetings about agent regulations and Mino didn’t like the seating arrangements. He pointed at me and said ‘can I swap sides with you?’, I said ‘no problem’, but I thought to myself ‘how bizarre!’, but we all moved to make him comfortable.
Then, an hour or two later, we were all having lunch and he was standing by himself in the lobby, I went over and asked him what all that was about earlier and he put his arm around me and said ‘thank you, my friend. I felt very uncomfortable and you were kind enough to help me’. Ever since then, he and I always had a connection.
So for me, as aggressive and as awkward as he could be, he believed in whatever he believed in and did what he did and if you worked with him, he worked with you. He and I would often speak, we’d laugh and have a joke – we got on very well. He was a really good bloke.
You don’t get Real Madrid and Juventus coming out and saying ‘we’re really sorry you’re no longer with us…’ if you weren’t well respected.
The biggest question with him though was always ‘how the hell did he get £40m out of the Pogba deal to Man United?’ – well, and he said this to me over lunch one day – ‘Juventus were prepared to accept just £20m for Paul, so I put in various different clauses and I got the price up to £40m, then up to £60m, then eventually, I got them £80m. £60m more than they originally wanted. How bad is it…
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