Like Bob Crow, Mino Raiola is a hero

Use the Evening Standard as your contra in life, and you will do well. A contra is someone, or something, that you should follow so that you can do the opposite. For The Evening Standard, their hatred of RMT leader Bob Crow was enough to tell you that Crow was in many ways a good man.

He realised that tube drivers, amongst others, were people who supplied a service that made them close to invaluable. Compare the wages that tube drivers earn and it is in direct correlation with the hatred they stirred up at The Standard. Crow was a hero, far better at his job than anyone he came up against. Mino Raiola performs the same role in football.

Raiola is held up as everything that is wrong with modern football. In fact, he is rebelling against much that is unfair about modern football. Billionaires and countries own most of the biggest clubs in the world, and in the Premier League.

They are used for only two reasons. In Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain’s case, they are shields to divert attention from the grim human rights abuses of Qatar and Abu Dhabi. They also extend attempts to develop soft power and assert their importance with the Western economies. It is hard to deny it has been effective.

The other reason is a bit more prosaic: To make money. The Glazers could clear a billion dollar profit should they sell up in the next few years and they can continue to take out a healthy amount in dividends each year in between, as the broadcast rights bidding round revs up again. Eventually, clubs will be used by Facebook, Amazon, Google and others in order to retain customers’ attention. All, of course, to make money and gain influence.

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None of these are new aims, but none of them are particularly honourable either. Football has always, on one side, been a grubby business. The game itself attracted fans and supporters and their love and obsession has been increasingly exploited on a grander scale. From the ground to the internet, it is a bizarre thing. Tribalism, commercialism and the occasional match in between, taking place below high level ambitions across the globe.

London is one of the biggest cities in the world. It is one of the most important financial centres in the world, facilitating transfers of trillions of pounds (and dollars, and euros) of business. It is so much richer than the rest of the country that it is like having a mini Norway in a rest of the country that is economically closer to Greece.

With the money it generates, it understandably gains plenty of attention from politicians, and benefits from superior infrastructure. The tube is vital to that.

Crow recognised tube drivers are an essential part of the machine. He was one of the few union leaders with the ability, opportunity and will to make the rest of the city and country realise that, and his union members were duly rewarded.

All Crow had done was to make sure that the wages of the drivers were commensurate with their value under capitalism. Of course, human life is worth far more than money but if people are forced to live under capitalism then they should be fairly rewarded within it.

Talent

Raiola has done something similar. Nations and billionaires want to use clubs for their own ends. The football club can function without many things but the most basic part of it is the players. They have the skill that can’t be copied and the talent that attracts the viewers.

Their abilities sustain the social media attention, the subscription to watch the games, and the support of billions of people not just of those close the clubs, but around the world. The noodle manufacturers, politicians and businessmen would not be here were it not for Paul Pogba, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Mario Balotelli and Henrikh Mkhitaryan. With so much resting on them, then of course they should be rewarded for it.

In many respects, Raiola is a more likeable figure than Crow. And, while there are benefits to joining a union, if you don’t like your leader it is not often practical to move to another. Players, however, come to Raiola and are free to leave to another agent should they not like the service he provides – as it stands, his popularity is increasing with players, not decreasing.

Ibrahimovic speaks warmly of Raiola, someone who was able to transform him into a hardworking player obsessed with being the best – he might not have got there, but he got close. He has played for the best teams in the world.

Another client, Pogba, was sensibly moved away from Manchester United when Alex Ferguson was giving Darron Gibson as much involvement as the Frenchman. He was then moved back when Mourinho was willing to reward his talent with a starring role – having had huge success in Serie A in between.

Raiola says he steers his players away from dodgy investments. He is correct – once you are rich the object is to remain rich and not lose it, not to make exponentially more. That’s important at a time when many players go bankrupt.

He is spoken highly of by players with less talent, who note his contract negotiations ended with them set for life despite only a few years in the game. He is still a businessman, but it does not appear that he is fighting with anyone except for the clubs, and nobody forces them to deal with him.

There are other players, and other agents, and yet they come back. That suggests that deep down, they know that they aren’t really getting a bad deal, just something like a fairer one for his players.