Raiola account tweet says agent alive but p****d off after death claim

Italian media first reported on Thursday afternoon that Raiola, representative of some of the sport’s biggest names including Erling Haaland, Paul Pogba and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, had passed away aged 54 after suffering an illness.

However, right-hand man José Fortes Rodriguez later told the Dutch press that Raiola was seriously ill in hospital in Milan but had not died.

A tweet from Raiola’s own official account then stated: “Current health status for the ones wondering: p****d off second time in 4 months they kill me. Seem also able to ressuscitate.”

Dr Alberto Zangrillo from San Raffaele hospital in Milan later told the Italian news agency Ansa: “I’m outraged by the phone calls from pseudo-journalists speculating on the life of a man who is fighting to survive.”

Raiola was previously hospitalised in January and was reported then to have undergone “very delicate” surgery on an undisclosed issue.

A message from his Twitter account at that time stated that he had not had major surgery, but merely underwent planned routine medical checks that required anesthesia.

German publication Bild had claimed in January that Raiola was in intensive care with a pulmonary condition not linked to Covid-19.

Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Marco Verratti, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Matthijs de Ligt and Mario Balotelli are just some of the other high-profile footballers to be represented by Raiola, who, along with the likes of Jorge Mendes, Pini Zahavi and Jonathan Barnett, is considered among the most powerful, wealthy and well-known agents in the sport.

Born in southern Italy but raised in the Netherlands, Raiola played in the youth team of HFC Haarlem as a youngster and later worked in his father’s pizzeria before claiming to have become a self-made millionaire as a businessman while still in his teens.

He then turned to football and rose to prominence by acting as an interpreter in Arsenal legend Dennis Bergkamp’s move from Ajax to Inter Milan in 1993 and later working with Juventus icon Pavel Nedved.

Raiola became the trusted and sometimes controversial agent of a number of football’s biggest global stars, playing a central role in several of the sport’s most expensive deals including Pogba’s then world-record £89million return to Manchester United from Juventus in 2016.

This story has been updated