Sir Alex Ferguson called him a very rude word.
He's been investigated for transfer irregularities.
Last year he bought Al Capone's villa in Miami.
He was a millionaire aged 19 after buying then selling a McDonalds franchise.
But most importantly, Carmine 'Mino' Raiola is one of the most powerful men in
football.
Agent to Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Paul Pogba, Romelu Lukaku and Gianluigi Donnarumma, Raiola
guides the careers of some of the biggest stars in the game, a brash character who
encourages the same in his clients and has players on his books worth a total north of
£300million.
But how did this man who used to work in his family's pizzeria, an outsider in
the football business who prefers shorts and a t-shirt to a suit, become so influential?
Raiola was born in 1967 in Nocera Inferiore [IN-FIDI-OR-RAY], a small town about 20km
outside Naples.
When he was just a year old his family moved to Haarlem in the
Netherlands, where they opened their first restaurant.
When Raiola was 11, he started helping out in the restaurant, washing dishes,
then waiting tables and eventually he became an integral part of the family business.
By the time he was a teenager he was already negotiating deals with banks for the business,
and eventually started a company, Intermezzo, who would help Italian firms in the
Netherlands.
It was around this time he made his first fortune, selling that branch of
McDonalds to a property developer.
He also briefly played for the youth team of his local
club, FC Haarlem, but it was soon recognised that his talents lay off the pitch.
He became the club's sporting director, but despite a typically
ambitious plan to sign a young Dennis Bergkamp, he soon fell out with the Haarlem
board, and instead began to work with an agency called Sports Promotions.
He became more and more involved with the football business, initially as an interpreter
to help with Bergkamp's move to Inter, then facilitating
moves for Dutch players to Italy, including Wim Jonk and Bryan Roy.
In the mid-1990s he formed his own company and signed
up Pavel Nedved, at that point playing for Sparta Prague, and after an impressive
performance at Euro 96, sold the winger to Lazio.
It was after brokering Nedved's subsequent transfer to Juventus that Raiola's reputation
really began to grow.
In 2001, he met the player who would make him a household name,
arriving at a posh Amsterdam restaurant in a Nike t-shirt where he persuaded Zlatan
Ibrahimovic, dressed in a sharp suit, to let him guide his career.
At that meeting Raiola provided statistics telling the young striker that he was far
behind his contemporaries, and instructed him to “sell all your cars and
watches.”
Ibrahimovic compared him to a character from the Sopranos.
“Do you want to be the best in the world?
Or the player who earns most and can show off the most stuff?”
Raiola asked Ibrahimovic.
The Swede chose the first option.
Raiola added more players to his portfolio: Ibrahimovic's mate Maxwell, Henrikh
Mkhitaryan, Lukaku, Pogba and Mario Balotelli.
It's probably the last two that have brought him the most notoriety.
To give an indication of how much his players lean on him, Balotelli
once called Raiola to tell him his house was on fire.
Raiola suggested he called the fire brigade.
When Raiola began working with Pogba, at that stage a promising but unpolished midfielder
coming through at Manchester United, he demanded an improved contract for his player.
“I distrusted him from the moment I met him,”
said Alex Ferguson.
“He and I were like oil and water.”
Ferguson called him a 'twat', refused to grant the improved terms and Pogba left for
Juventus.
When United bought him back in 2016, Raiola earned a reported £41million in fees
and commission from all three parties involved.
It was with this money he bought the Capone house.​
For all the brashness, it's clear that Raiola serves his clients well.
Or, perhaps we shouldn't call them clients.
"He is extremely loyal to the people who are in his inner circle, and that
means his players,” once said Thijs Slegers, a Dutch journalist and friend of Raiola.
“To him they are like family.
And that's why he is the perfect negotiator because you always want to
do the best for your family."