Super agent who has made Manchester City superstar one of best-paid players on the planet

They say behind every successful man there is a great woman.

And for Erling Haaland that woman is Brazilian super agent Rafaela Pimenta, who is busy catapulting the Manchester City striker alongside Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi to become one of football’s highest paid players.

Within less than a year, Ms Pimenta has negotiated the striker’s £51.2 million transfer to Manchester City from Borussia Dortmund as well as vast sponsorship deals with Nike and Breitling watches. Not a bad start considering she hadn’t even expected to take over as Haaland’s agent.

The chance came up when his previous agent and 50-year-old Pimenta’s business partner, Italian-Dutch football agent Carmine ‘Mino’ Raiola, died last April.

Representing Haaland hasn’t always been easy. She says one of the major obstacles facing her is sexism in football.

She is busy catapulting the Manchester City striker alongside Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi to become one of football’s highest paid players

Within less than a year, Ms Pimenta has negotiated the striker’s £51.2 million transfer to Manchester City from Borussia Dortmund as well as vast sponsorship deals with Nike and Breitling watches

Ms Pimenta said: ‘Margaret Thatcher could run a country but not be a football agent. Because in football many men believe they are the only ones that know.’

She recalls one negotiation with a club executive. He told her: ‘I exchanged a lot with you by email. So you really exist . . . I thought you were just a hooker from Brazil.’

Ms Pimenta says she still deals with that man, adding: ‘I don’t think it’s humiliating to be a woman. If that’s how you try to make me feel bad, that’s very stupid.’

After studying law at university, she worked for Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the president of Brazil from 1995 until 2002. While working in government, Ms Pimenta met Raiola at a charity football match. 

Ms Pimenta also looks after former Manchester United player Paul Pogba and has started to represent some of Spain’s most high- profile female footballers.

Given the opportunity to create the identikit megastar — a player who ticks all the boxes in this ultra-individualistic, sexually ambivalent age — football’s cynical money-men would doubtless invent someone just like Erling Haaland.

First, take his looks. ‘Startling’ doesn’t do them justice. With his blond, Viking locks (usually tied in a bun for matches, but flowing down his back like sheaves of Nordic summer-wheat when he scored against City’s closest rivals Arsenal this week), cold-as-ice eyes, squidgy nose and rubbery lips, he might be the androgynous alter ego of Daemon Targaryen, the menacing prince in Game Of Thrones spin-off House Of The Dragon.

Though he is built like Conan the Barbarian, however, standing almost 6 ft 5 in in his sky-blue stockings and weighing 15 st, off the pitch he is the gentlest of giants, meditating each morning to help him cope with the demands his perfectionist manager Pep Guardiola places on him.

His quirkily alternative lifestyle also extends to filtering his tap water, following a largely organic diet (including whole ox hearts — no vegan he) and switching off all digital devices several hours before going to bed, and wearing blue-tinted glasses to block out ‘disturbing’ light rays and stabilise his circadian rhythm.

When he scores a goal, he doesn’t punch the air or kiss the badge on his shirt, like other adrenaline-pumped strikers. Seemingly oblivious to the mayhem around him, he slides into the lotus position and closes his eyes, the epitome of zen.