Jorge Mendes says he has already given 3,000 million euros to Portuguese football

“ A Gestifute, to date, has brought almost 3,000 million euros to Portugal. Perhaps the second most important agent in the world may have taken a maximum of 500 million euros to his country,” said the agent, on Friday, during the ‘Leading the Game’ conference at the Catholic University in Porto.

Jorge Mendes considered that the dimension achieved by Gestifute, a company that created 30 years ago, demonstrates the importance of international relations in a market in which Portugal, despite the small population, can move significant values.

“ We live in a small country, we have 10 million inhabitants, we know our reality, but in this industry, the most important thing is relations and credibility”, he said.

The entrepreneur recalled that at the beginning of his career, he knew only a few people from the clubs' exploration departments and progressively built a network of contacts through travel and negotiations.

“ Nowadays, worldwide, I have my doors open everywhere. I know everyone, but to get to that point, it took a lot of work, a lot of sacrifice and a lot of travel. But the motto is that ‘nothing is impossible’,” he stressed.

As an example of the initial difficulties, he told the process that led former medium Costinha, then in the third Portuguese division, to Monaco, after a failed attempt at placement in Valencia.

Mendes explained that the Spanish club intended to lend the medium to Villarreal, a solution that he refused, eventually obtaining, through contacts in the prospection, an opportunity in the Monegasque emblem.

“ Please ask for an opportunity, to let him stay a week, but they said no, that Monaco would not hire a 23-year-old player from the Portuguese third division. After a week, they said to bring it ", recalled.

According to the manager, three days of training was enough for Jean Tigana to decide to hire Costinha for four seasons, starting a course that would take him later to FC Porto and to the European conquests of 2003 and 2004.

The need to protect the investments of clubs was another of the principles highlighted by Mendes, who recalled the return of Ricardo Lent from Barcelona to FC Porto.

“FC Porto tried to buy it for two or three million. I said no. If they wanted to buy it, they had to pay exactly what Barcelona had paid,” he said, referring that the extreme would eventually be transferred to Inter Milan for about 30 million.

The agent also evoked the attacker Pedro Neto, currently serving Chelsea, in the transfer of Sporting from Braga to Lázio, from Italy, when he had only a few minutes of use in the main team, in a business in which Mendes's belief was decisive.

“It cost 20 million euros, it was a lot of money for a player that nobody knew. But I told the sports director [Lazio] to believe and me and to buy it, because I realized I had talent. Then they sold it [to Wolverhampton] for another three million”, shared

At the same conference, the president of the Portuguese Professional Football League, Reinaldo Teixeira, highlighted the economic weight of the sport, pointing a contribution of 956 million euros to the national economy, about 300 million in taxes and over 6,300 direct jobs.

The initiative also served to present the MBA Executive in Football, developed by the Catholic Porto School of Business and Economics and the Liga Portugal Business School, whose first edition begins in November.

The director of Católica Porto SBE, João Pinto, highlighted that it will be the first MBA executive in football to start with international accreditation of the Association of MBAs (AMBA), aiming to train leaders able to reconcile sports performance, financial sustainability and strategic vision.