NOS Football•
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Arjan Dijksma
Investigation journalist NOS Sport
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Guido van Gorp
Investigation journalist NOS Sport
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Arjan Dijksma
Investigation journalist NOS Sport
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Guido van Gorp
Investigation journalist NOS Sport
“Luciano, honestly. It’s war.”
“Let’s continue the war.”
In the summer of 2004, Italian agents listen to a telephone conversation. The one voice they hear is from Juventus director Luciano Moggi. The other is from agent Mino Raiola, who tries to get attacker Zlatan Ibrahimovic from Ajax to Juventus.
Their conversation is not what the agents want to hear. They are looking for proof that Moggi manipulates the referee appointments around Juventus matches. Ultimately with success: Moggi is later banned from football for life and the club must relegate.
The conversations with agent Raiola are by -catch, but they give a unique insight 21 years later. In the podcast Mino’s Imperium fragments of those phone calls are used to reconstruct the transfer from Ibrahimovic from Ajax to Juventus.
In the conversations, Raiola is the enthusiastic narrator. He keeps Moggi in detail about all developments in Amsterdam. The director of Juventus often responds briefly and measured.
The Pact: “You must be satisfied when I call!”
After secret discussions in the months before, they have a common goal: Ibrahimovic must go to Turin for the lowest possible transfer fee. The less Ajax gets for the player, the better for Juventus, Ibrahimovic himself and therefore also for his agent Raiola.
Together, Raiola and Moggi try to find out what the transfer fee that Ajax has in mind.
Raiola: “For 12 million euros they told me:” Absolutely not “. And I said Ajax is useless to sell me ‘no’.
Moggi: “That is a waste of time, mino, 20 or 25.”
Raiola: “No, no, that is clear. 20 or 25, I told him, my ass. I think it’s 15 or 16, isn’t it!”
Moggi: ‘Zlatan had to argue with Ajax to be able to go to Juventus’
The two exchange information and determine a joint strategy. But the conversations are not always friendly.
Raiola: “Okay. And you have to be a little satisfied when I call!”
Moggi: “What? I don’t understand you.”
Raiola: “You have to be a little more satisfied when I call you!
Moggi: “But of course!”
Raiola: “Because I give you the gems!”
In the battle for Ibrahimovic, another Italian club is the big competitor. AS Roma has serious interest and even makes an offer of 12 million euros. The competitor also calls on a former Ajax player, Cristian Chivu, to spawn the Swede. Without success.
Raiola: “He had Chivu, a Roma player, call Zlatan. Do you know what he told him, haha? Chivu had it that Totti and Cassano would like to see him coming and do you know what Zlatan said about it?” Say, when did you receive your last salary? ” And Chivu said, “Uh, in April.” And then Zlatan said to him, “I don’t wait for my salary. He told him that. “
Moggi: “You see, they are shameless! Really!”
Raiola talks Moggi after every conversation with Ajax director Arie van Eijden. Even if two French clubs seem to be joining the fight.
Raiola: “He then comes up with a fax from Lyon, that they want to negotiate in around 20 million … and a fax from Monaco, which he just sends me. Then I said:” Watch out, Monaco doesn’t even have money to turn on the lights in the stadium. “
Raise the pressure: ‘He no longer plays with Van der Vaart’
With a few weeks to go until the transfer deadline, the transition from Ibrahimovic to Turin seems like a hopeless matter. The Swedish talent is so important for Ajax that technical director Louis van Gaal and trainer Ronald Koeman don’t like him to go. But that changes at lightning speed in the days after a, at first glance, unimportant, practice match between Sweden and the Netherlands.
Rafael van der Vaart gets injured in that duel by a threeththe action by Ibrahimovic. Van der Vaart reacts angry afterwards because the two teammates are at Ajax. That public conviction again arouses the anger of the Swede. After that, a group conversation escalates that is intended to calm the minds.
Raiola: “I said he will not go to Lyon nor to Monaco. Or he goes to Juventus, or he’s going nowhere! And he no longer plays with Van der Vaart. Zlatan said that today, Louis van Gaal. Zlatan said,” You know I don’t play here. Is not my problem, “Zlatan said.”
The deal is finally closed on the last day before the TransfeDeadline. Ajax receives 16 million euros for the Swedish attacker.
Luciano Moggi’s plan and Mino Raiola was successful. Moggi is proud to look back on it in the podcast decades later: “It wasn’t really clashing at Ajax between Zlatan and Van der Vaart. So that was another way to let him go away. By unleashed a fight. It was made up by me and mino. A preconceived plan to be able to leave.”
And Arie van Eijden, his opponent at the negotiating table, knows that the refined game of Moggi and Raiola was successful: “Let us as club drivers not think that we have sent it. No, of course, as a driver you can say that you are not sent. Sure it is driven. But that’s how it works!”
