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Pep Guardiola’s a ‘coward and a dog’, Jurgen Klopp’s ‘a piece of s***’ and Paul Scholes ‘wouldn’t recognise a leader if he was in front of Churchill’ – Mino Raiola at his abrasiv best

Controversy and Mino Raiola are the proverbial two peas in a pod as hardly a season goes by when the ‘super agent’ isn’t hogging the sports headlines at his Faustian best, casting aspersions at all and sundry whose views run counter to whatever hidden agenda he has lurking up his sleeves.

Football’s most notorious football agent is probably the most brazen and blunt negotiator out there, making quite a pretty penny lobbying clubs any which way to find a suitable – top-paying, to say the least – club to roost the charges under his care. From the way he blatantly antagonizes football personalities – regardless of whether they’re revered icons, players or pundits – one gets the strong impression he actually savors the infamy of being crude and crass even to the point of being pernicious and vile.

Few are the top level football manager who haven’t had a run-in with him.

This week sizeable tremors were again felt, spiking towards the red indicator on the Richter scale, as the Raiola volcano showed inclement signs of an imminent eruption, threatening to spew larva once more at Manchester United, his favorite target of late since he succeeded in his last ploy to return his equally controversial player, Paul Pogba, back to Old Trafford after having hijacked him to Juventus for a stint that handsomely remunerated both agent and charge.

The insufferable Italian again rocked the United vessel with his bold and surprising – probably not so for those accustomed to his modus operadi by now – claim that Pogba’s time at Old Trafford is now ‘over’, because the super agent himself has decreed so in his high-handed demeanor.

Raiola orchestrated his volcanic rumbles with the aplomb of a maestro, timing them to perfection right in the immediate aftermath following his the Red Devils’ victory and morale-boosting performance against West Ham as hardly had the dust even begun to settle when the Italian, with a diabolical flourish of his baton, brought on a staccato of discordant notes in a flurry – publicly stating that his World Cup-winning client ‘has to change teams, he has to change the air’.

Then the crescendo steeply arose when he followed that up with a distinctively assertive climactic clashing of the timpanis that his client has no intention of renewing his contract. The curtains came billowing down. Sheer brilliance.

United fans and not-so-impartial pundits were instantly livid, while still chomping on the piece of poisoned apple insidiously fed to them, clamoring for the club to drop instantly Pogba not only for the next match awaiting them – the crucial Champions League decider against RB Leibzig that they subsequently lost – but also from the club. Game, set and match to Raiola (and probably Pogba, too)!

All this is nothing new for Raiola but merely the sets, costumes and masks the props on a stage constructed by him, with the script also conveniently written, produced and directed by him. All others in the drama are merely the characters he has premeditatedly inserted into the main and sub plots. The declamatory soliloquies and the accompanying tones of voice range from cajoling, pleasing and teasing to condescending and patronising to caustically antagonizing. Big, shocking comments aimed at the biggest clubs and the biggest names in football – all only to make himself main protagonist in the spotlight.

Let’s now take a look at some of the best, and the vilest, utterances that have ushered forth from his mouth.

On Pep Guardiola:

Oh, with this one, Raiola certainly didn’t have to think twice, absolutely pulling no punches with his comments.

The relationship between the pair had been irredeemably sullied stemming from their days since Guardiola’s Barcelona days when Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Raiola’s client, was at the club. We’ll follow up on this later on.

So it was hardly a surprise when Raiola raved and ranted against Guardiola at City, vowing that none from his stable of superstars would ever sign for the the Cityzens.

Cattle-branding Guardiola a ‘scumbag’ by in an interview with Gazzetta dello Sport, Raiola went on a stampede:

‘Pep Guardiola, the coach, is fantastic. As a person he’s an absolute zero. He’s a coward, a dog.

‘He’s a classic priest. “Do as I tell you – don’t do what I do….” If Manchester City win the Champions League this season it will emphasise what a good coach he is – but I’ll hate it.

‘I went for him that night in the corridors at Wembley [after Barcelona beat Manchester United in the Champions League final in 2011] – only Adriano Galliani, AC Milan’s chairman, stopped me. Lucky for Guardiola.’ 

On Jurgen Klopp:

Not even the Premier League’s crème de la creme managerial royalty has been spared the abuse spewing out of Raiola’s mouth. Nobody, but nobody, is safe.

Raiola had Klopp in his crosshairs not long after the German arrived on English shores, when the latter decided that Mario Balotelli was surplus to his plans.

Balotelli, one of Raiola’s first talented charges, enjoyed a close bond with the Italian agent. But when the striker was told to train alone at Liverpool’s base while the club sought buyers for him, the agent took offense at this as the decision did not sit kindly at all with him.

Italian outlet Gazzetta dello Sport carried quotes from Raiola when he unleased his RPGs straight at the German boss, saying:

‘At the end of the day the Liverpool directors admitted Klopp was unfair.

‘I won’t judge him as a coach, even if for me he isn’t a great tactician. It’s not enough to say Klopp was unfair – he was a piece of s***.’

On Johan Cruyff:

Even doyens like the late Johan Cruyff of World Cup, Ajax and Barcelona fame had a rather unceremonious run-in with Raiola during his time at Camp Nou, after he had returned in an unofficial capacpity to the club as advisor to former president Joan Laporta.

Cruyff and Guardiola – the latter being the club boss then – were both on the receiving end of Raiola’s machine-gun fire after Zlatan Ibrahimovic was marginalised from the Barca team, infuriating the agent after which he produced the infamous quote that Guardiola had ‘bought a Ferrari but was driving it like a Fiat.’

Cruyff was caught in the line of fire when he expressed his disapproval of this in the Spanish media, to which Raiola reportedly snapped back:

‘I think Cruyff and Guardiola can go to a mental hospital together, shut up, sit there and play cards together. 

‘They would do football and Barcelona a great service.’

On Paul Scholes:

Increasingly frustrated and incensed at his portfolio showpiece client Pogba getting the short end of the stick from fans and pundits alike, Raiola saw red especially when the former United stars of yesteryear weighed in on the matter.

The 2017-18 season had come to to a close and Scholes specifically took it upon himself to highlight the French midfielder’s role having contributed to a humiliating 3-2 loss to Brighton, who were then battling to avoid relegation from the Premier League.

Scholes opined that Pogba ‘lacked leadership’ and was unable to take a game and drive it in the direction that was needed.

Raiola came thundering back at Scholes on Twitter, saying the former United legend ‘wouldn’t recognise a leader if he was in front of Sir Winston Churchill’, prompting another United legend, Gary Neville, to urge Pogba to ‘shut up’ his talkative agent.

On Sir Alex Ferguson:

This one is definitely for the history books, probably amongst Raiola’s most notorious clashes ever, with none other than arguably the most famous and best-regarded coach in world football, Sir Alex Ferguson.

To start off the intrigue, both men despised each other, and absolutely refused to do business at all costs, if possible.

Again the ill-feeling originally, and now in retrospect, most ironically, stemmed from United seeing Raiola performing a Merlin-esque ‘now-you-see-him-now-you-don’t’ Pogba disappearing act, suddenly reappearing on a free transfer to Juventus.

Legendary United doyen and then-boss Ferguson had seen the tremendous potential the Frenchman had in him and was desperate to retain him, but after the mysterious disappearing act trick, pointed the finger at the agent, accusing him of scheming the whole exit strategy.

‘Maybe Ferguson only likes those who obey him,’ the agent responded to Italian outlet Tuttosport.

‘From his quotes, I understand that Ferguson still doesn’t have a clue who Pogba really is.’