Raiola: Secret Club Ownership Revealed

• Arjan Dijksma

  Investigation journalist NOS Sport

• Guido van Gorp

  Investigation journalist NOS Sport

The Czech football club Viktoria Plzen played in the European club tournaments against superpowers such as FC Barcelona, ​​Bayern Munich and Internazionale in recent years. Forgotten are the dark years around the turn of the century in which the team camped in the second division of Czech football. And, without the fans knew it, Mina Raiola had as the owner.

The Italian-Dutch agent Raiola died three years ago suddenly appeared in those years in the Czech city, birthplace and name giver of the lager. Even before his breakthrough as a representative of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Pavel Nedved and Paul Pogba, he traveled around the world to close deals with smaller players. But in the Czech Republic he did not come to negotiate players’ salaries and transfer fees. Raiola wanted to buy the club.

It is a wonderful history, which is recorded in the Podcast Mino’s empire. With leading roles for Raiola and the Italian lawyer Luca Ferrari. And a supporting role for Scout Ben Hendriks.

Hendriks can still remember the phone call as yesterday. He worked as a scout at the Italian club Udinese when Raiola hung on the line. “He asked me to look at the weekend at Viktoria Plzen to map the team,” says Hendriks. “After I did that, he called me again and asked me to stay in Prague, because he came there too.”

At that moment Hendriks had no idea that the club was for sale. And that he was about to be involved in takeover interviews. The scouting trip from Hendriks was, without knowing in advance, intended to determine the value of the complete selection. Or as Hendriks describes it: “He first wanted to know what was in the barrel.”

The scout was then drowned in Prague to a meeting room. The selling party was on one side of the table. Hendriks was suddenly part of the delegation on the other side of the table: the potential buyers, led by Raiola. In addition to him, Zdenek Nehoda, former top football player and at the time were the most important agent of the Czech Republic.

“Mino introduced me as the technical man of the company,” Hendriks starts his story about that special experience. “It was talking, talking, talking. I just listened, of course, because I couldn’t keep up with it. I understood that they couldn’t get out of finances. Then MINO suddenly said: we’re getting off, it’s over! I knew his tactics for a while, put on my coat and walked out of the room with him.”

In the end, both parties came out. Raiola bought Viktoria Plzen, but his name was not on the transfer papers. “He did not mention his own name as the owner. I suddenly heard a different name,” says Hendriks.

After some research, he is talking about Italian lawyer Luca Ferrari. Via a cracky telephone line, Ferrari now tells openly about his time as a club owner in Czech football: “Mino did not want to be known as a strong player in the market. He wanted to have the space to map out the best strategy for his players, without being linked to clubs or countries. That was the reason for him to avoid the spotlights.”

“Viktoria Plzen had to become a junction in the Czech Republic where we would develop talent with a limited budget. To have those players then made a big transfer,” explains the Italian lawyer. “I wouldn’t call it a success. The plan looked good, but it was not implemented well.”

Scout Hendriks returned to Udinese after the negotiations in Prague and followed the Czech adventure of Raiola at a distance. Despite the lack of sporting success, according to him, it was a lucrative chapter from Raiola’s career: “Mino was planning to build the club, but he first wanted to earn money from it. Players I found worth a lot, he sold it. He deserved it well.”

Viktoria Plzen got a new, full Czech owner in 2005 and then the sporty road was gradually being found. The club was allowed to call itself Champion of the Czech Republic six years later. This season, Viktoria Plzen went down against Rangers in the preliminary round of the Champions League.