Another lucrative window for Portugal’s ‘gatekeeper’ Jorge Mendes
DThe doors of Club Alfândega will remain open, even if one of its former owners has moved on to the big stage. Located in the town of Caminha, on the border between Portugal and northern Spain, the club’s founding in 1989 was inspired by a trip to Ibiza the previous summer.
“The innovator who creates his models at the door, in bars and clubs promotes a new way of exploring the night, inviting public figures, in bars and clubs”, said Morais Vieira, one of the founders. Interview with a local newspaper in 2014.
A future in a Jorge night at the big Alfandega – which means “customs” Club It was Wolves and Tottenham coach Nuno Espírito Santo, who would become his first big client. Mendes was then a 30-year-old businessman who also ran a video store, but he risked meeting a young goalkeeper on a boat he owned and soon emerged as the most powerful agent in the world.
Nuno, frustrated in his attempts to leave Vitória Guimarães, recalls. Interview with the Guardian In 2016, a scheme was hatched with Mendes, in which he pretended to be drunk in front of Antonio Pimenta Machado, then from Vitória, who ended up in a transfer to Deportivo La Coruña. The rest, as the story goes, is history.
The Gestifute agency, founded by Mendes a few weeks after Nuno’s transfer in 1997, counts Cristiano Ronaldo and José Mourinho among its clients and is estimated to have millions of pounds at least 100 million pounds in commissions every year since 2015 traded on the value of 1 billion pounds. Despite a recorded transfer window for Premier League clubs’ recorded spending figures, it was a profitable summer despite failing to secure Ronaldo’s desired departure from Manchester United.
In June, he won a healthy commission for overseeing Darwin Nunez’s £85million transfer from Benfica to Liverpool – two months since the Uruguayan ditched his original agent Edgardo Lasalvia. Mendes local agents found in Lisbon after downloading 2 million Balhinha do Sport agents from Balhinha do Sport, following a disagreement with Balhinha’s representative, Hernán Reguera, over pounds’ fees.
According to reports Mendes received a share of 3 million euros that led to a 3 million euros agreement that took 0 million euros from Vieira do Porto, 0 million euros from Porto to Paris Saint-Germain to 4 million euros from Arsenal to Paris Saint-Germain to 4 million Arsenal their total commission. €13.5 million is your remaining fee, informed reportsUnder an agreement with Porto, Mendes would receive half of each time the player was sold for more than 30 million euros.
“In Portugal, he’s really the guardian – he’s thinking of doing business with the big three is the media Jorge Mendes,” says the specialist sociologist from the University of Florence. “Nobody changes without being, especially for the Premier League. It’s probably most important as an agent – he’s been sure of many perks as an agent. He’s really everywhere at the moment.
The excellent example of Ruben Vinagré Sporting to Everton at the end of July is an example of how the Mendes network works. The Portuguese defender – from the Sporting years before joining Monaco in the summer of 2014. is well known. Be Mendes’ closest ally.
Vinacre spent two seasons at Monaco before being sold to Wolves, where Mendes has an advisory role and is next to the club’s Chinese Fosun. Vinacre’s next stop is Olympiacos, which, like Nottingham Forest, is owned by Evangelos Marinakis. The media mogul and shipping mogul has a men’s relationship, which had the force used to help the forest alongside Atletico Madrid’s Renan last week.
Vinacre spent just four games in Greece and played four games with Portuguese time Famalicão in January 2021, in part due to problems. Belongs to Famalicão Israeli Aidan Oferal – another with close ties to Mendes and also the biggest shareholder in Atlético.
Vinacre returned to Sporting last summer on a deal that included a clause that included a Portuguese team paying €10m for 50% of their economic rights if they reached the round of 16 of the Champions League. After 18 games, he completed a permanent move to the club on 1 July, having started in his teens. Less than later, Everton – who named former Wolves boss Kevin Thelwell sporting director in February – four drafts, with Vinegar for a season with an option to buy. He has yet to start a Premier League game in Frank Lampard’s time.
“Everton have a good relationship with Mendes and he is becoming influential in the Premier League,” says Russo. “There was a status that is being offered in some big clubs. But now he has rebuilt his relationships with many of them and is now increasing his ties with others like PSG. He is gradually rebuilding his network which has been crippled by football leaks and other investigations.