Italian-born Dutch football agent Mino Raiola speaks to journalists on September 2, 2016 during presentation of Nice's football club new signings at the Allianz Riviera stadium in Nice, southeastern France. / AFP / VALERY HACHE (Photo credit should read VALERY HACHE/AFP via Getty Images)
Mino Raiola is one of the biggest names in football and there have been rumours circulating about him being dead
Social media went into a tizzy recently after some rumours of football super agent Mino Raiola started doing the rounds.
The 54-year-old is known to be the agent of some of the biggest football stars in the world. However, reports flooded social media recently that the Italian football agent had passed away.
Raiola was born in Salerno, Italy in 1967 but moved to Haarlem in the Netherlands later on. He played for the youth team of HFC Haarlem but then became a coach for the team.
However, the 54-year-old is remembered for conducting some of the biggest deals in football history.
Raiola has been the agent for top names such as Paul Pogba, Frank Rijkaard, Dennis Bergkamp, Romelu Lukaku, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Pavel Nedved and Erling Haaland.
The Italian was also the reason why Pogba joined Manchester United in 2016 for a then world-record fee of €105million. Reports suggest that Raiola made around €25million from the deal.
Raiola has had some health issues in recent months and his Twitter profile provided an update on the same back in January 2022.
“Mino Raiola is undergoing ordinary medical checks that require anestesia. All was planned and no emergency surgery happened.”
Some Italian outlets had claimed that Raiola had passed away. However, that seems to be far from the truth.
Many football journalists pointed out that Raiola had not died but was very ill. Tariq Panja claimed a prominent British agent, who is close to Raiola, confirmed the news.
“Just received a call from a prominent British agent and close friend of Mino Raiola to say that the Italian-Dutch agent has not died but is “very, very ill”. Says reports of his friend’s death are inaccurate.”
Raiola’s Twitter account also confirmed the same. It is not sure who has written the update, but the account claimed that he was upset that social media had ‘killed’ him in the past four months.
“Current health status for the ones wondering: pissed off second time in 4 months they kill me. Seem also able to ressuscitate.”
This isn’t the first time that false news regarding a big name has been posted on social media and amplified, and it won’t be the last. This is one of the problems of social media and it doesn’t seem to be getting fixed any time soon.
No further updates have been provided about his condition of Raiola at the time of writing this piece.
However, we all at Mediareferee wish the football agent the best.