According to Mino Raiola, the only way is up. Raiola should know – he has been involved in some of football’s biggest transfers in the past 10 years.
The last three years has seen 10 of football’s top 20 transfers go through.
For eight years (2001 to 2009), Zinedine Zidane’s £46m move from Juventus to Real Madrid was the most expensive transfer in football. Today, with increased TV revenue money and lucrative sponsorship deals, Zidane just scrapes into the top 20.
The past summer bore witness to two of the top four transfers of all time, as Gonzalo Higuain joined Juventus for £75.3m and Paul Pogba returned to Manchester United, from Juve, for a world record fee of £89m [€106m].
Raiola, Pogba’s agent, also negotiated the transfers of clients Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Henrikh Mkhitaryan to United and reportedly pocketed £20m for his agency in the process.
In an interview with Jim White, on talkSport, Raiola predicted that a footballer may move between clubs for £200m [just under €240m] within the next ‘two or three years’. Raiola then caught a hold of himself and projected ‘three or four years’. He said:
“How the economy is evolving, especially in the Premier League, we will not be far away from a £200m deal.
“They will probably be Brazilian, because they add something special. A wonderchild like the new Neymar or the new Messi for sure will make £200m.”
There was talk, last season, of a shock Messi move to Chelsea for £110m [€131m] so perhaps a younger version of the Argentine maestro could secure a higher fee.
Last month, Jonathan Barnett, Gareth Bale’s agent, declared that a player earning £50m-a-year ‘will come very shortly’.
In a world where John Stones joins Manchester City for £49m and Yannick Bolaise goes to Everton for £28m, maybe Raiola is talking complete sense.
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