Haaland agent: 'Club director thought I was a hooker'

Carlo Garganese

• Updated: 5 Apr 2023 22:48 BST
• 4 min read

Super agent Rafaela Pimenta has opened up on the difficulties and discrimination she has faced over the years as a female agent.

Pimenta has emerged over the last year as one of the most powerful and recognisable agents in the world.

The Brazilian inherited the agency run by Italian-Dutch super agent Mino Raiola when he died in 2022 at the age of 54.

READ MORE: Who is Rafaela Pimenta? Mino Raiola’s successor and agent of Haaland

Pimenta boasts some of the best players in the world on her books, including Erling Haaland, Paul Pogba, Matthijs De Ligt, Gianluigi Donnarumma and Marco Verratti.

She worked with Raiola for 18 years before inheriting his agency, One.

And Pimenta has revealed some of the discrimination and sexism she faced in the male-dominated world of football and transfers.

What did Pimenta say?

“When I started, people were much more in my face when they disrespected me,” she told The Athletic..

“They would just say it. Today they will still say it, but it gets said behind my back. That is worse. When they say it to your face, you can address it if the person is reasonable, but if they are an idiot, you won’t address anything.

“There are people who say, ‘You’re a woman, what do you know?’; ‘You’re Brazilian, not European, so what do you know?’; ‘Do you have kids yourself?’; ‘How many times have you been to a training ground?’. It never has anything to do with what we are discussing. Some people do this to intimidate you. Others do it because they believe it and that is the worst part.

“If you believe a woman is less than you in football because you are a man, what can you say to convince them (otherwise)? It is just immoral.”

Pimenta highlighted one particularly shocking incident in the past when a director she was negotiating with over a player said he thought she was 'a hooker'.

“A football director once looked at me and said, ‘You’re Brazilian… I thought you were a hooker’. They said that in a meeting in front of the player and his father,” Pimenta recalled.

“I will never forget this day. Even if I was, which I am not, it didn’t change the fact they owed the player money.

“If you don’t have thick skin to face it, you will never change it.”

Pimenta, a qualified lawyer, was once described as “the most important person in football that nobody knows” by an unnamed Premier League director.

She is certainly very well-known now and, hopefully, treated with far more respect than she was in the past.