Jorge Mendes' clients include
Radamel Falcao, Diego Costa and
James Rodriguez... but agent's
influence raises questions about who
really owns football’s stars
By Nick Harris for The Mail on Sunday
22:37 06 Sep 2014, updated 12:42 07 Sep 2014
'Super agent' Jorge Mendes boasts Angel Di Maria
and James Rodriguez among his clients
Diego Costa and Eliaquim Mangala also clients of
Portuguese
48-year-old earned £20million from transfer
negotiations with Man United this summer
Total transfers negotiated by Mendes total over
£1billion
Mendes carries four mobile phones and is fluent in
English, Spanish, French and Italian
Cristiano Ronaldo described Mendes as a 'fair and
honest man'
Jose Mourinho considers Mendes the best agent in
the world
Angel di Maria, James Rodriguez, Diego Costa and
Manchester City’s Eliaquim Mangala are among his clients,
moving clubs in the past two months alone in permanent
transfers worth £208.5million.
And that does not take into account the potential £51.3m
final transfer involved in Colombian striker Radamel
Falcao’s move from Monaco to Manchester United.
No wonder, the charming 48-year-old Portuguese ‘super
agent’ Jorge Mendes, friend and adviser to footballing stars
from Cristiano Ronaldo to Jose Mourinho, has been hailed
for ‘winning’ the transfer window. And not just one.
VIDEO Scroll down to see Falcao and Rodriguez practice
one-twos in Colombia training
The Mail on Sunday have calculated Mendes has negotiated
transfers totalling £1,068,370,548. So far.
With a typical ‘take’ of 10 per cent commission per deal, he
will have cleared some £20m-plus this summer, and
£100m-plus in commissions alone in his career. But his
earnings do not stop there. Via his company GestiFute he
also owns stakes in many players.
Mendes, married with five children, carries four mobile
phones, is fluent in English, Spanish, French and Italian, and
also acts as a consultant to other agencies who own and
trade in players.
Total of Mendes' transfer negotations
As such he represents what many fans see as the good, the
bad and the ugly of modern football. He is, simultaneously,
a key figure in a dynamic marketplace where you can rise
on hard work and talent; a major player in a parasitic
industry where hangers-on prosper; and a key figure in the
often murky waters of vested interests where just a few
people control many of the players and, arguably, the clubs.
That is not to traduce Mendes. Those who know him say he
is engaging and provides good pastoral care. ‘He’s with
players for the long haul, not the quick buck,’ says one
associate.
Ronaldo says Mendes is a ‘fair and honest man’ who he
trusts ‘completely’. Mourinho said of him in 2010: ‘When I
was told there was to be an award for the best agent in the
world, I was immediately convinced that the award had to
be Jorge Mendes.’ The Chelsea boss also says Mendes
encourages players to ‘respect their commitments’ to clubs.
Sir Alex Ferguson says Mendes is ‘the best agent I dealt
with, without a doubt’.
Also not in any doubt is Mendes’s increasing influence.
GestiFute’s client list contains 58 names, two of them
managers, Mourinho and Valencia’s Nuno Espirito Santo,
the former goalkeeper known as Nuno.
JAMES RODRIGUEZ
Club: Real Madrid
Age: 23
Nationality: Colombian
Position: Midfielder
Total move value: £101.50m
Last move: £63m to Madrid in 2014
Real Madrid’s Pepe and Fabio Coentrao are also on the list,
as are United’s David de Gea and Anderson, and Monaco’s
Ricardo Carvalho and Joao Moutinho.
Eighteen players are aged 23 or under, most of them in
Portugal and Spain. Spotting potential and following it
through is a hallmark of Mendes’s business.
He grew up in Lisbon, the son of a gas plant worker for
Portugal’s biggest petrol company, Petrogal. By 20 he was
playing semi-professional football as a left winger. He ran a
video store, then opened a bar and club in coastal town
Caminha. There he met Nuno, then 22, and helped him
move to Deportivo La Coruna.
Eighteen years later, Nuno has been handed three young
Mendes clients on loan this summer in a loan intake that
also includes (non-Mendes clients) Alvaro Negredo and
Bruno Zuculini, both from Manchster City.
By helping the young Nuno, Mendes was on his way, a
fledgling agent at 30. He next helped midfielder Costinha
get his break, from lowly Nacional to Monaco, then took
winger Capucho from little Vitoria Guimaraes to Porto. His
contacts grew, as did his rivalry with the then dominant
Portuguese agent Jose Veiga. The pair had a scuffle over
Luis Figo in Lisbon airport in 2002.
Falcao and Rodriguez practice one-twos in Colombia
training
CRISTIANO RONALDO
Club: Real Madrid
Age: 29
Nationality: Portuguese
Position: Forward
Total move value: £92.24m
Last move: £80m to Real Madrid in 2009
Mendes didn’t land that client from Veiga but he did bag
Hugo Viana, Ricardo Quaresma and Ronaldo. Crucially, he
charmed a client from another agent, Jose Baidek; the client
was Mourinho and the truly big time beckoned.
By Euro 2008, Mendes was representing every major
Portuguese footballer. He was agent to 16 of the 23-man
squad, and to Portugal’s manager Luiz Felipe Scolari, who
he then took to Chelsea.
In such a high-stakes environment it is inevitable Mendes
has upset people. He was accused of poaching Nani (in
2007) and Bebe (in 2011) from their respective former
agents Ana Almeida and Goncalo Reis, just before those
players made moves to United. They said he pinched their
players; he said they wanted his help to make progress.
Reis said of his muscling in on the Bebe deal: ‘When
Mendes arrived I was out of the transaction. It’s a sad thing
that the one who discovers a player is not able to stay with
him when big clubs are interested.’
Cristiano Ronaldo nets early goal Real Madrid 2-1 Fiorentina
ANGEL DI MARIA
Club: Manchester United
Age: 26
Nationality: Argentinian
Position: Midfielder
Total move value: £89.08m
Last move: £59.7m to Man United in 2014
The Bebe transfer also highlights another aspect of
Mendes’s business — owning players. His firm GestiFute
earned about £2.87m from the £7.4m United paid for Bebe
for their share of his ‘economic rights’.
Another of Mendes’s recent client moves took Spanish
striker Adrian Lopez from Atletico Madrid to Porto, with
Porto paying £8.7m for 60 per cent of the player and the
other shareholding an unspecified third party.
Another Mendes client, 21-year-old Portuguese midfielder
Andre Gomes, on loan at Nuno’s Valencia from Benfica, is
owned — entirely separately from his loan move — by
Valencia’s Singaporean billionaire owner, Peter Lim.
Third-party ownership (TPO) is a regulatory minefield. In
England it is prohibited by FA rules and opposed by the
Premier League, whose spokesman said: ‘It threatens the
integrity of competitions, reduces the flow of transfer
revenue contained within the game, and has the potential to
exert external influences on players’ transfer decisions.’
ELIAQUIM MANGALA
Club: Manchester City
Age: 23
Nationality: French
Position: Defender
Total move value: £42m
Last move: £42m to Man City in 2014
A report last year by auditors KPMG said there were about
1,100 TPO footballers at work around Europe, in total worth
about £1bn.
Sources say four — among them Mangala — and perhaps
more of the 100-plus players coming to the Premier League
this summer were third-party owned — before the English
clubs took 100 per cent ownership. Liverpool’s Lazar
Markovic and United’s Marcos Rojo were among them.
Chelsea’s parent company, via a subsidiary firm, is believed
to own a group of TPO players, but none in England, so no
rules are broken. Mendes has been linked to that fund as
consultant.
Mendes didn’t own Mangala, he is ‘just’ the player’s agent
and worked with several parties as City paid about £40m
for the player. The £40m was split between Porto, an
‘ownership fund’ called Doyen and another called Robi Plus,
with agency fees on top.
No wonder Mendes, pictured so often with his clients
recently, is always smiling.
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