UPDATE: Influential football agent Carmine ‘Mino’ Raiola has been left fuming after being prematurely pronounced dead as he fights an illness in hospital.
Reports from Italy on Thursday evening AEST stated that Raiola, who is one of the most well-known agents in world football, had died from an illness, before they were refuted by his confidants and Raiola himself in a bizarre turn of events.
“Current health status for the ones wondering: pissed off second time in (four) months they kill me,” Raiola tweeted shortly after the reports surfaced.
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“Seem also able to resuscitate.”
https://twitter.com/MinoRaiola/status/1519657935193923584
The Italian agent’s doctor also chimed in, unleashing on reporters who had incorrectly reported on his death.
“I’m outraged by the phone calls from pseudo-journalists speculating on the life of a man who is fighting to survive,” Dr. Alberto Zangrillo from San Raffaele Hospital in Milan told Ansa.
https://twitter.com/FabrizioRomano/status/1519655641668890625
Italian beIN Sports correspondent Tancredi Palmeri was one of the first reporters to tweet out the news of Raiola’s apparent death and issued an apology soon after.
“I deleted the tweet about Raiola,” he tweeted.
“It wasn’t speculation or ‘run to be first’. I’d never do any like this on such matter.
“News was broke by TgLA7, (the) most rated Italian TV news; confirmed by all Italian biggest media.
“But I did tweet wrong too, therefore I am mortified and apologise.
“Therefore I have decided to suspend myself from Twitter for the next week. Again: I wasn’t the one to break it about Raiola. ‘Institutional’ tweets about works will still come due to working commitments. But I won’t tweet anything from my voice for the next week.”
Raiola was born in 1967 in the southern Italian town of Nocera Inferiore and rose to become one of the most influential agents in the world game in the early 1990s.
After starting his journey at Sports Promotions, a sports agent company, Raiola started his own business in the mid-90s, with his first major piece of business the transfer of Czech great Pavel Nedved from Sparta Prague to Italian Serie A side, Lazio.
Raiola has brokered some of the world’s biggest transfers, including Paul Pogba‘s $154 million move from Juventus to Manchester United in 2016, a world record at the time, and Romelu Lukaku‘s $126 million move from Everton to Manchester United the following year.
The Italian is poised to have an extremely busy off-season with the futures of high-profile clients Pogba and Norwegian phenom Erling Haaland currently up in the air.
Other players who are managed by Raiola include Mario Balotelli, Matthijs De Light, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Stefan De Vrij, Ryan Gravenberch, Marco Verratti and Blaise Matuidi.
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