Mino Raiola NOT dead but ‘fighting to survive’ (updated)

Friends of Mino Raiola have denied widespread reports that the football agent is dead.

Various news outlets in Italy — including TgLa7 and Tancredi Palmeri — had earlier claimed the super-agent succumbed to death on Thursday.

Raiola underwent surgery in January after being hospitalised in his homeland of Italy, with the nature of the operation not revealed at the time.

But friends of Raiola have contradicted the death rumour and disclosed that the Italian is “very, very ill” and fighting for his life in hospital.

Fabrizio Romano, the top Italian journalist, quoted Alberto Zangrillo, head of the anaesthesia and intensive care unit of San Raffaele hospital in Milan, as saying Raiola is not dead but “fighting to survive”.

“I’m outraged by the phone calls from pseudo-journalists speculating on the life of a man who is fighting to survive,” Zangrillo was quoted to have said.

Dr. Alberto Zangrillo from San Raffaele Hospital in Milano tells Ansa on Mino Raiola conditions: “I’m outraged by the phone calls from pseudo-journalists speculating on the life of a man who is fighting to survive”.

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— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) April 28, 2022

On his part, Jose Fortes Rodriguez, Raiola’s close friend and colleague, said the football agent is not dead. He also described the reports as “nonsense”.

“Mino isn’t dead. Those reports are nonsense,” Rodriguez told De Telegraaf.

A statement from Raiola’s Twitter account read: “Current health status for the ones wondering: pissed off second time in 4 months they kill me. Seem also able to resuscitate.”

Current health status for the ones wondering: pissed off second time in 4 months they kill me. Seem also able to ressuscitate.

— RAIOLA (@MinoRaiola) April 28, 2022

Raiola is representing a number of prominent football players including Paul Pogba, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Marco Verratti, Matthijs de Ligt, Erling Haaland, and Mario Balotelli.

He is a polyglot who was born in Nocera Inferiore, Italy in 1967 before his family emigrated to Haarlem in the Netherlands the following year.

After brief stints as a footballer and coach, he began his agent career in the 80s, brokering Dennis Bergkamp’s move from Ajax to Inter Milan in the summer of 1993.

He was reported to have earned as much as £20 million from the world record £89 million sale of Pogba from Juventus to Manchester United in 2016.

In 2020, Forbes estimated that Raiola was worth around $84.7 million.