The world record transfer of Paul Pogba from Juventus to Manchester United was made possible by the player’s agent, Mino Raiola. The deal took place after several weeks of negotiations and speculation about the French player’s possible destination. It was Raiola who made it possible for Pogba to return to his previous club at Old Trafford.
The super agent Mino Raiola has now come out and spoken about all the clubs who were in the running to sign the player. The agent said that it was only Manchester United boss Jose Mourinho who had the ba*** to pay a world record fee for the Frenchman and also suggested that Arsene Wenger and Arsenal did not seem to have them when it came to the transfer market.
United had splashed a world record fee of £89million for Pogba’s signature which saw his agent, Raiola, getting a massive amount as commission for making the deal happen. Raiola has told the Daily Mail, that he was not only referring to the case of spending the money but also talking about any manager’s ability to sign the player.
Raiola said, “It’s not just a case of spending the money. It’s shouldering the responsibility of spending that money and saying, ‘yes, this is my man’.”
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger was criticised heavily for not spending money on buying expensive players, which saw him get a fair amount of stick over the social media from Arsenal’s and rivals’ fans alike. The Gunners did spend a total of £52.2 million in the last few days of the transfer market as Wenger bought German defender, Shkodran Mustafi and Spanish striker Lucas Perez.
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The two players were Wenger’s fourth and fifth signings of the summer as the Frenchman had already secured the signatures of Granit Xhaka, Takuma Asano and Kelechi Nwakali.
But Raiola did not seem convinced about Wenger’s ability to purchase players at a higher price. The agent said, “Arsenal have the money but do they have the ba***?”
“I respect Arsene Wenger. He has a philosophy that says these figures don’t match what I want to do, so that’s OK,” Raiola added. However, he felt that the negative comments about Wenger’s ability to buy players, do not seem justified as the Frenchman went on to spend a total of £96.7 million in the whole summer window.
The super agent who made almost £20million from Pogba’s transfer to United also spoke about how Real Madrid were also interested in signing the player. He said, “Real Madrid? The will of Zinedine Zidane was strong but we were not sure it was the will of the club.”
United spent a combined amount of £145.3 million on Pogba, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Eric Bailly, while they got Zlatan Ibrahimovic on a free transfer from Paris Saint-Germain. The agent, thus, spoke about how he considers the Manchester club as the biggest in the world.
He said, “Manchester United sent out a message with the transfer they did: 'this is the biggest club in the world'.”
