Heaven knows how much this will end
up costing someone. As if Haaland weren’t
valuable enough, Raiola is to negotiating
what Mozart is to music; just swap the
symphonic genius with trash talk and hype.
His demeanour makes Ari Gold look like
a wimp. Aware that most clubs can pay the
buyout clause, Raiola will drive up the other
fees as far as he can – and almost always
gets his way.
In August, Christian Falk, the transfer
oracle for German newspaper Bild, reported
that Raiola wanted €50m per year in player
wages and an agent fee of €40m. Any takers?
The wheels have long been set in motion,
though. In April, Raiola and Alfie paid visits
to Barcelona and Real Madrid – but with the
two clubs mired in debt, everyone knew that
they couldn’t afford Haaland that summer.
Yet Raiola made a point that’s bound to
haunt football executives for months.
“I don’t know if Real Madrid could afford
Haaland,” he said with a mischievous smirk.
“The question is a different one: can Madrid
afford not to buy Haaland?”
So far, Raiola and the Haalands couldn’t
have played their hand any better. When
Erling was about to leave Norway in 2018,
he could have joined Bayer Leverkusen or
Juventus. Instead, he signed for Red Bull
Salzburg. Some asked why he would move
to Austria and not Germany or Italy, but
Tor-Kristian Karlsen, who has spent 20 years
as chief scout and sporting director at a host
of European clubs including Monaco and
Maccabi Haifa, says they knew what they
were doing.
“They’ve planned his career to perfection,”
Karlsen tells FFT. “The ingenious thing with
Salzburg is that he went to a league where
he could perform well straight away, while
the professionalism and working methods
were as good as the top clubs in the
Bundesliga. Almost all young players who
leave Salzburg succeed where they go next,
because they’re so well prepared.”
After a quiet start in Austria, Haaland
exploded with a hat-trick on his Champions
League debut against Genk in September- By the end of the year he was racking
up more goals than games, and another
move seemed inevitable. Juve were again
interested, as were Manchester United and
RB Leipzig – but the Haalands instead picked
Borussia Dortmund.
“BVB are a dream team for a striker,” says
Karlsen. “It’s probably only Ajax who can
create better conditions for scoring goals.”
The hype didn’t exactly die down when
Haaland, on his Dortmund debut, came off
the bench against Augsburg to thump home
a hat-trick in 20 minutes. As ever, Raiola was
one step ahead. During contract talks, he
knew that Dortmund wouldn’t want to sell
Haaland unless they were forced to. So, the
release clause gave Haaland two and a half
years to develop in Germany, by which point
he could pick his next club freely while Raiola
drove up the agent fee. Yet, if you’d listened
to the latter this March, he sounded as if he
had somehow underestimated his own
client’s progress.
“He did things quicker than everybody
imagined,” said Raiola. “Maybe I was too
careful when I said, ‘Oh no, let’s move to
Dortmund instead of I-don’t-know-where’.”
A few months later, Haaland capped off
a 2020-21 season in which he’d scored 40
goals in 40 games.
Soon, Raiola appeared to push for a move
one year earlier than planned. In April, the
rumour mill went into overdrive when he
and Alfie paid a visit Barcelona to meet
with newly crowned president Joan Laporta.
Raiola claimed he was there to congratulate
Laporta – and if that was hard to believe, it
appeared even less credible when the duo
rocked up at Real Madrid later the same day.
Still, the release clause wasn’t yet active,
and Dortmund – then chasing a Champions22 FOR
2022Below Scenes
like this have
been common
Right “Phil, can
you get Pep to
sign a striker?”“HE WILL BE TAKEn BY
THE TEAM THAT OFFERS
THE HIGHEST SALARY –
IT’S nOT EVEn POSSIBLE
FOR BAYERn MUnICH”