‘The spilled tea was everywhere’: Pogba’s agent reveals quarrel with Alex Ferguson

Paul Pogba ‘tricked’ Manchester United twice in his career. First he left the club as a free agent in 2012 and signed for Juventus, only to come back in 2016 for a then world record 110 million euros. And then he left the club again in 2022 as a free agent and signed again for Juventus. And he did all that with the guidance of the diseased super-agent Mino Raiola, who had other stars like Zlatan Ibrahimović or Erling Haaland under his contract. When Raiola died in 2022, his super-agent deputy Rafaela Pimenta took over and finished the contract which allowed Haaland to move to Manchester City.

The Brazilian lawyer, who worked as Raiola’s right hand man talked to Guardian about those deals, and one of the things she vividly remembers is the meeting with sir Alex Ferguson, who was United’s coach at the time when Pogba didn’t sign his contract and left the club as a free agent for the first time.

“I cannot call that a meeting. 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” remembers Pimenta.

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Luckily for Ferguson, he was not the coach anymore when Pogba, along with Raiola and Pimenta triumphantly came back to Manchester in 2016. According to some reports, the Italian agent got 27 million euros from Juventus for agreeing a world record 110 million euros. It was Pimenta who ‘squeezed’ that additional 10 million.

“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” she recalls.

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Apart from Pogba and Ibrahimović, Erling Haaland is the biggest star of their agency. Pimenta reveals that the whole family is very professional and that she likes doing business with them, but regrets that Raiola died before he saw Erling signing for Manchester City.

“It was very emotional because I wanted Mino to be there. For Erling’s first game I was crying all the time. 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” she said.

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Seeing the amount of money pumped into football in recent years, and the rising transfer fees, Pimenta things that we are not far away from football’s first billion-pound player, and she thinks that Haaland could be that man.

“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” say Pimenta.