Mendes, Raiola, Dumitrascu – the five agents making a mint
As transfer activity begins to increase, TEAMtalk looks at five of the men who stand to make a fortune from wheeling and dealing during the window.
Jorge Mendes
The king of agents, Mendes currently has around $1billion worth of active contracts, with clients such as James Rodriguez, Angel Di Maria, Diego Costa and, of course, Cristiano Ronaldo on his roster.
Ronaldo shares a special relationship with Mendes, with the Portugal star acting as best man at Mendes’s wedding last year.
Mendes has done extremely well out of Manchester United over recent years, having earned 24million euros from the Red Devils in 2014 alone. Sir Alex Ferguson gave the 50-year-old a glowing reference in his book ‘Leading’, when he said: “There are some decent agents, but you don’t need all the fingers of one hand to count them. Jorge Mendes is one.”
Commissions and potential earners this summer: Jose Mourinho, Renato Sanches, Angel Gomes, William Carvalho, James Rodriguez, Diego Costa.
Mino Raiola
Mino the mouth has got his feet firmly under the table at Old Trafford this summer, having already delivered Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Henrikh Mkhitaryan to Jose Mourinho. Raiola’s biggest windfall, however, will come if United can get their hands on Paul Pogba again, with the Sunday Times claiming the agent could earn £25million from the Pogba deal alone.
Sir Alex Ferguson pinned the blame for Pogba quitting United in 2012 on Raiola, though the Italian-born Dutchman is not a man who wastes too much time worrying about what other people think of him. Nor does he carry the appearance of a man who, according to Forbes, had active contracts last year worth £186million. But his clients trust Raiola, who is not afraid to throw some tough love in among all the fawning, support and reassurance that big egos often require. Prior to his first meeting with Ibrahimovic, he told the Sweden star to “go f*** himself”. Zlatan now describes Raiola as his “agent, friend and advisor”.
Warning: video contains strong language
Manchester United will not be Raiola’s only revenue stream in the coming weeks…
Commissions and potential earners this summer: Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Paul Pogba, Romelu Lukaku, Blaise Matuidi, Mario Balotelli.
Jonathan Barnett
The English super-agent could have a huge windfall coming his way very shortly, but not on this occasion due to his clients’ transfer deals.
The 66-year-old owns Stellar Group, which possesses the largest roster of clients of any agent across all sports on Forbes’ top 50 list – around 150 players across the globe. He negotiated the world-record transfer of Gareth Bale to Real Madrid as well as Luke Shaw’s £30million move to Manchester United the following summer.
But like many players and clubs, Barnett himself, or rather, his agency, is attracting plenty of interest from China this summer. According to a Reuters story in May, four Chinese investor groups are involved in a bidding war worth more than $140 million for Stellar Group.
Commissions and potential earners this summer: Grzegorz Krychowiak, Wojciech Szczesny.
Volker Struth
The German is the most influential agent in the Bundesliga – but Struth lost one of his biggest clients earlier this summer.
Mario Gotze walked away from the SportsTotal stable at the end of last season, all the while speculation over his future persisted. The player seemed keen to stay at Bayern Munich, despite the club making it clear that the 23-year-old was not part of their plans. With his future seemingly becoming more unclear, Gotze decided that his interests were best looked after by relatives, rather than by Volke, who a year previously had accused Pep Guardiola of “destroying” his client.
Volke and SportsTotal still have plenty of big earners on their books…
Commissions and potential earners this summer: Toni Kroos, Omer Toprak, Timo Horn
Constantin Dumitrascu
L'agenzia al top per i guadagni e' Mondial Sport Management MSM del "misterioso" Constantin Dumitrascu (spherasports) pic.twitter.com/wsnwqyKiuR
— Massimo Sottosanti (@max_vzla) October 7, 2015
Dumitrascu’s Mondial Sports Management group outperformed Mendes’s Gestifute last summer by 61million euros when they raked in 910million euros of commission, thanks largely to deals involving Anthony Martial, Douglas Costa, Yohan Cabaye, Dimitri Payet and Aleksandar Mitrovic.
N’Golo Kante also earned Mondial a rather more modest sum when he joined Leicester last summer in comparison to the commission Dumitrascu’s group will earn from the midfielder’s £32million move to Chelsea over the weekend.
Unlike some of his peers, Dumitrascu stays quiet, preferring a more business-like approach to looking after the welfare of his clients. It works for the Frankfurt-based operator and his associates, with this year threatening to be more lucrative than last if his roster is anything to go by…
Commissions and potential earners this summer: Samuel Umtiti, Edinson Cavani, Nemanja Matic, Axel Witsel, Raphael Varane, Olivier Giroud, Geoffry Kondogbia, Aymeric Laporte, Moussa Sissoko, Dimitri Payet, Felipe Anderson.