Super-agent Rafaela Pimenta: Alex Ferguson hit the table and our tea spilled everywhere | Socc

Super-agent Rafaela Pimenta: ‘Alex Ferguson hit the table and our tea spilled everywhere’

Leading agent discusses sexism in football, the prospect of selling a digital Erling Haaland and what Paul Pogba is really like

Rafaela Pimenta is often described as the most powerful woman in football because her work as an agent, with a roster of players headed by Erling Haaland, offers her a rare influence in a world dominated by men. For more than 20 years Pimenta forged a lucrative working relationship with Mino Raiola. She was an unobtrusive force as a former academic and lawyer, from Brazil, who closed some of the biggest deals in world football while Raiola grabbed the attention as a boisterous super-agent.

Since Raiola’s death last year, Pimenta has taken a more public role as she heads her agency in Monaco. Yet, as Pimenta explains calmly over lunch, in all her decades in men’s football she has encountered only two other women in positions of power. “I dealt with Marina Granovskaia [the former Chelsea director who oversaw the club’s transfers during the Roman Abramovich era] and I met Karren Brady once at West Ham. That’s it.”

Pimenta smiles wryly. “But it was the case all those years ago that a woman would write a book and use a man’s name. Otherwise she would not be published. So many women were involved in important scientific inventions and never took credit. It’s really shocking. But it’s also shocking to see that still today.

“To make yourself heard as a woman you have to prove yourself much more than men do, all the time. If you get angry, you’re a bitch. If you react, you’re overreacting because you’re an emotional woman. If you want to be a leader, you’re too ambitious, cold, hard. For a guy it’s OK to be like this. We are in an industry where there is no equality. Look what happened with the women’s World Cup. What the hell was that?”

Pimenta represents Esther González and Misa Rodríguez, who both played for Spain during their victorious World Cup campaign this year. But Spain’s outstanding football was blighted by the kiss that Luis Rubiales, the president of their football federation, forced on Jenni Hermoso. Vilified by those who protected entrenched misogyny in Spanish football, Hermoso eventually filed a criminal complaint of sexual abuse against Rubiales. It still took him three weeks to resign.

“How can somebody expect to get away with that?” Pimenta asks. “How can anybody support him? Maybe one person is out of his mind but, if you take into account the time it took for something to happen, it’s because the whole system is not united to condemn that.”

How did Rodríguez and González cope? “I talked a lot to Misa and Esther because it was worrying to see how they felt. That was so sad – to see how hard they fought, how far they came, how difficult it is to be a woman in football. Their achievement was shadowed by abuse.

“I speak many languages so I read a lot from around the world and I saw there are some people who still think: ‘Look at this girl, overreacting. It was just a little kiss. She wanted it.’”

Pimenta looks up with steely intent. “There’s a lot to be done but football is a weapon. It’s a weapon for change.”

When I ask Pimenta if change is coming, she nods. “It’s one of the reasons I’m here. If I can inspire one girl to fight for what she wants, my job is done.”

Pimenta had been a law lecturer, who slipped football business into her curriculum to attract students in São Paulo, before working for the Brazilian government on anti-trust legislation. She was writing her PhD in international law when she met Raiola. He wanted help in understanding Brazilian law relating to transfers but his character meant that he didn’t listen to Pimenta.

“Mino’s in front of me, smoking like a chimney and wearing a big red watch,” Pimenta says. “Everything I told him about the law he would have an answer. After one hour I said: ‘Look, if you know so much about Brazilian law, do whatever you want. Bye.’ I was so angry, I had to walk away.”

Pimenta had so impressed Raiola that, even without her number or social media, he spent the next few months tracking her down after she moved to Brasília. He was contrite and Pimenta remembers Raiola saying: “‘You’re the only one I met who knew what you were doing. If I do anything in Brazil, it will only be with you.’ I said: ‘That’s nice, Mino Raiola, but I don’t want to do anything with you.’”

Raiola was determined and he helped Pimenta understand that football would allow her to focus on the two areas that fascinated her most – law and psychology. She was so adept and tough in negotiations, while showing great empathy for the players, that Raiola soon persuaded Pimenta to work alongside him in Europe. Raiola said later: “Clubs think their troubles are over when I leave the room and Rafaela takes over. Five minutes later they say: ‘Please come back. She’s impossible!’”

Pimenta believes “we did complementary work. Mino and I played a team game all the time, different roles, different backgrounds. In a man’s world I’m a foreigner, a woman and Brazilian, which does not help. We did a lot in Italy where there was a clear perception Brazilian women only came to do sex-related work.

“Mino was also the odd one out. He was a genius but Mino never wore a suit and was not one for manners and formalities. He understood only he could have a voice. We already had so many challenges so to add the cherry on top – oh, look at the woman trying to talk – would have been too much. We just cared about getting the job done.”

Pimenta was working on Haaland’s transfer from Borussia Dortmund to Manchester City when Raiola died in April 2022. She was grief-stricken but she still completed the move a few months later and Haaland’s phenomenal form in the Premier League has blossomed since then. “It was very emotional because I wanted Mino to be there,” Pimenta recalls. “For Erling’s first game I was crying all the time.”

She works closely with Haaland and his father, Alf-Inge, and her face lights up. “I like dealing with the Haalands because they expect professionality and they communicate clearly. It doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman. They listen to you. It’s very refreshing.”

Describing Haaland’s character, Pimenta says: “He’s amazing, with his feet on the ground. He’s very conscious of who he is and what he represents. He’s not delusional. I never saw in him those negative changes that fame and fortune bring. He’s only 23 but he’s so mature, so deep, so calm. And he loves to eat.”

Pimenta laughs but she is emphatic that Haaland could become football’s first billion-pound player. “I am not saying a transfer fee would reach this amount. I mean the whole package you generate throughout your career. Today you can play until 35. Think of the salary, transfer fees, broadcasting revenues, sponsors, ticket sales, shirts. With a player like Erling it gets to one billion.

“The multiples in the gaming industry are huge. In the metaverse, maybe I sell a digital Erling Haaland for €2,000 to 100 million people in India, China, Brazil, Mexico. Maybe we will get to a point that I experience a football game with goggles, which triggers the same emotions as if I was there. You’re really going 3D with the virtual experience. So maybe we’ll sell the football game experience, not only to broadcasters but to individual people who can never afford or find the ticket to the Bernabéu or the Etihad. They can experience the game [on the metaverse] as if they are there. So when I say one billion I am using multiplicators beyond the physical.

“Transfer fees also keep going up. When Paul Pogba was transferred back to Manchester United [from Juventus in 2016] I said to Mino: ‘We need to fix the fee at Bale plus one euro.’ Mino said: ‘Why?’ And I said: ‘So we can break the world record of Jonathan Barnett [the agent who negotiated Gareth Bale’s transfer from Spurs to Real Madrid for €100m]. It needs to be just €1 more than Bale.’ In the end it was more.”

United eventually paid €110m. Pimenta recalls an earlier meeting with Sir Alex Ferguson during Pogba’s first stint at United. “I cannot call that a meeting,” she says. “I call it a train crash. It started bad, it ended bad. Sir Alex came in and he was so angry that he hit the table and our tea spilled everywhere. He was totally red. Mino was totally angry. It was a disaster.”

Pimenta laughs before becoming contemplative as she considers Pogba’s travails, which have him facing a long ban after failing a drugs test.

“We’re working on [an appeal] but, being a lawyer, I’m the first to believe that if something needs to be discussed on a legal level, it needs to stay there. But I always have hope.”

Pogba calls her his second mother and Pimenta says: “I will always be there for Paul. He’s a part of my life and I’m grateful for the way he treated me and always gave us respect. He’s a great person that has evolved so much, because I met him as a kid. He’s a father now, with three kids. So he changed so much and he will grow more. What I like about Paul is that whenever something negative happens, he does his best to find a lesson in it.”

Is Pogba misunderstood? “People often judge somebody because of a haircut. But Paul would not be at home thinking for six hours about his haircut. He only thought about it when his barber said: ‘Go blonde, go funny.’ Paul says: ‘Whatever.’ When Paul was doing the haircut on Instagram, he was ahead of his time. Now they all do it. If you go to Lazio, they have a super-beautiful barber room in the training ground. The last time the Brazil national team was together, the barber was one of the activities.”

Pimenta, meanwhile, is engaged in a broader battle. She believes Fifa is intent on undermining agents because they represent players who still do not have a voice in the governance and scheduling of football. Pimenta says that footballers are playing far too many games, to their detriment, while Fifa implements more regulations against agents.

“They see us as a pain in the arse because we’re the ones saying: ‘Too many gigs, too many hours travelling back and forth for the national team, the club, this competition, that competition.’ I think the agenda is to weaken agents so that players are also weaker. There are many illegalities in these regulations but it will be for a judge to decide.

“When Mino was suspended, his suspension was reversed as soon as we went to court. But somebody with a strong voice tweeted in support of Mino. This person tells me he got a call that said: ‘You want to work in football, you delete the tweet.’ I believe him. Now my counterpart [Fifa] in a court case has infinite financial means. Our means are not infinite. So we can only hope that there will be justice. But, as long as we live, we will fight.”

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