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How Jorge Mendes became one of the European game's most powerful men

احدث اجدد واروع واجمل واشيك How Jorge Mendes became one of the European game's most powerful men

jorge mendes

Jorge Mendes has shot in a few years from a figure barely known in this country to the status of football "super-agent", representing José Mourinho, Cristiano Ronaldo and most of Portugal's international stars, negotiating multimillion‑pound moves to some of Europe's top clubs. Yet despite promises from clubs and the game's authorities that transfers would become more transparent, the football public is still told very little about how agents like Mendes do their work, or how such deals, involving huge money, are concluded.

Tomorrow the Guardian begins a three-part series which will reveal more detail than ever known before about the deals Mendes has conducted, including the most extraordinary transfer of last summer and arguably any other: Manchester United's €9m signing of Bébé, the fledgling striker.

The Guardian has since discovered a bitter legal dispute going through the district court in Mendes's home city of Porto, brought against him by the English agency, Formation, formerly run by Paul Stretford, Wayne Rooney's agent. Formation claim they had a partnership agreement with Mendes's Gestifute agency to help establish Mendes's players in the Premier League but that he reneged on that contract once Ronaldo's move to United, in 2003, ushered him into football's big time.

Formation are claiming they are owed half the fees Mendes earned on that deal and when Chelsea signed Mendes's three client players, Ricardo Carvalho, Paulo Ferreira and Tiago Mendes, shortly after Mourinho joined Chelsea as the manager.

Mendes is defending the claim, arguing that his was not an agreement which required him to share agent's fees 50-50 and that Gestifute in Porto did not receive anything from the Chelsea deals because the club's contracts were with Gestifute International, a company registered in Ireland.

This unprecedented insight into how Mendes and two of the Premier League's richest and most prestigious clubs did their deals comes three weeks after Mendes picked up the agent of the year award at the Globe Soccer event in Dubai. The presentation was accompanied by a video featuring high praise for Mendes from his clients, Mourinho and Ronaldo, who described Mendes as his "big brother".

Mendes, accepting the accolade, said of the European transfer business: "There has been tremendous growth in the last few years. The transfer ceiling for a player in the Portuguese market never [previously] rose above €15m. I feel proud to have helped in this growth."

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