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company Galp and he won his first trophies selling straw hats on the beach in Costa Caparica. He played football at junior championship level and, determined to make it as a professional, migrated north to Viana do Castelo. He ran a video rental store, worked as a DJ and opened his own nightclub in Caminha, before discovering that he had a gift – the talent of first being able to gain the trust of players, and then being able to value them, generally above market prices. His first major transaction was the transfer of goalkeeper Nuno from Vitória de Gimarães to Deportivo de la Coruña in 1996. With the commission obtained from the deal, the foundation was laid for Gestifute to become the football industry’s most powerful agency, with subsidiaries such as Polaris Sports, dedicated to the management of image rights, marketing and advertising, and the promotional agency Gestifute Media.

      Mourinho and Mendes shared an office straight away. The agent set himself up in the suburb of La Finca in Pozuelo. He went to Valdebebas, along with his players and his coach, almost every morning, accompanied by various assistants. When it was training time he would sit in Mourinho’s chair and look out of the window from his own private agency to follow the progress of the team from up on high.

      The sight of Mendes in his dark-blue pinstripe suit sitting behind the glass, drinking coffee and looking at everything from behind the mask of his sunglasses, sparked the imagination of the players every morning as they warmed up. There was no shortage of jokes and laughter. Especially when jogging as a group, they had the feeling they were being watched from above.

      ‘There’s the lord and master of the club,’ said one. ‘There’s the boss.’

      Mendes entertained his business partners in Mourinho’s office. There they organised their interviews with other agents. Juanma López, the former Atlético player, who was now a players’ agent, appeared one morning. It was a topic of conversation for the naturally curious players. ‘Mendes has his office here,’ they commented. Lass Diarra did not understand what all the fuss was about: ‘Who’s that?’ he said. The Frenchman had never seen López play.

      The first stone of Valdebebas was laid on 12 May 2004. During the opening Pérez gave a visionary speech: he imagined a huge theme park that club members could access daily and in which they rubbed shoulders with the players.

      ‘The new “City of Real Madrid” has an inclusive character,’ he said. ‘It will be open to all who love the sport and want to enjoy all the possibilities for entertainment around it.’

      The old Ciudad Deportiva ‘Sport City’ on the Avenida Castellana, which finally closed in 2004, had been an accessible complex. Anyone, in exchange for a few pesetas, could get in to admire their idols as they trained. In Valdebebas the club forbade fans entering on weekdays. Even club members, whose contributions to the budget, mainly through ticketing, subscriptions or contributions, make up a third of Madrid’s income, were denied access.

      The first-team training sessions were closed to the public before Mourinho arrived at the club. But for the new coach, living in a cloister was not enough. So the ban was extended to relatives and agents of the players. If the father of Sergio Canales, who was then 19, wanted to see his son train he had to apply for a permit with three days’ notice. The same thing happened to the agents of Casillas, Alonso and Arbeloa, among others. Before the end of 2010, Mourinho had extended the ban to Jorge Valdano, previously the highest sporting authority at the club. The doors of Valdebebas were now only unconditionally open to one person outside the club: Mendes.

      There were now 300 players represented under the Gestifute banner. In some cases, the company merely represented them in the presence of third parties. In other cases, and under Portuguese law, the only European legislation that permits it, Gestifute acquired partial ownership of players through investment funds, and this enabled them to speculate in greater volume. When a Portuguese club sold a player whom it co-owned with Gestifute, the company charged its share of the transfer.

      In the autumn of 2010 Mendes represented Mourinho and four players in Madrid’s first team. Pepe and Ronaldo, on the club’s payroll since 2007 and 2009 respectively, and Carvalho and Di María, signed on the recommendation of the new coach. Angel Di María was the player whom Mourinho had called for most fervently throughout the summer. Pérez found it difficult to accept the outlay of around €30 million, believing that the Argentinian left-winger, despite his success at the World Cup, did not have enough public appeal to justify his price. But Mourinho insisted that he was a good strategic signing.

      The acquisition of Di María was more expensive because Benfica held no more than 80 per cent of the player’s rights. Since 2009, the Lisbon club had been ceding percentages of players’ rights to the Benfica Stars Fund, managed by Banco Espírito Santo. In return for greater liquidity, Benfica were required to transfer players only when their sale value ensured a profit for private investors. The sale of Di María marked the first profit in the history of the Benfica Stars Fund. Other equally profitable transactions would follow: the transfer of Fabio Coentrão to Real Madrid for €30 million in July 2011, David Luiz to Chelsea for €30 million in January 2011 and Javi García to Manchester City for €20 million in 2012. It is not known if Mendes participated in all these deals through the fund. He says that he did not and the Banco Espírito Santo guarantees investors’ anonymity. The fund manager, João Caino, provided no documents but said that the participants are a group of companies and rich individuals, but not football agents.

      The summer of 2010 was full of high expectations. José Ángel Sánchez could at last count on a friend in the club, a true collaborator with whom he could shape the future from the same dressing room and with equal power. After two years of major investment in players, the board rubbed its hands at the prospect of infallible, charismatic certainty, unanimously agreeing that Mourinho was the missing piece. Inspired by stories that had actually been conceived in the board room, the press and fans dreamed of the wonderful adventures of a team full of stars and led by a secret-weapons scientist of a coach, permanently cloistered inside the perimeter of the impenetrable Valdebebas training complex.

      Madrid’s pre-season sessions were held behind closed doors, with the exception of one. Mourinho organised every day’s work meticulously. He was busy with the most diverse of self-imposed tasks but, like many British managers, did not always personally take training. The players remember that on the evening he opened the doors to the press he had spent four days in his office, leaving the training-ground work to Karanka. This time, however, he appeared with renewed vigour on the pitch. Under the gaze of journalists and cameramen stationed on the balcony with their cameras, Mourinho was frenetic, urging a surprising level of movement for the middle of summer. Players laughed, saying that it seemed as if they were training to play the final of the Champions League the following day. This extrovert show aside, sessions were quiet affairs, the press only permitted for 15 minutes as the players left the dressing room and warmed up before beginning work.

      One of the routines that most caught the attention of training-ground staff occurred when security guards locked the doors and ushered out the journalists. It happened a few times while it was hot. Mourinho took off his shirt, displaying his naked torso, and let Rui Faria and Karanka supervise the warm-up while he strolled off onto another pitch, walking alone, disappearing into the westerly distance before finally stopping to put his shirt down on the grass and lie or sit on it to sunbathe. Always the same. Methodical. Most players feigned indifference. The only one who dared to interrupt him was Dutchman Royston Drenthe.

      ‘Boss! What are you doing?’

      ‘I think my tan is fading,’ came the reply.

      Those days at the end of August were the most serene of all Mourinho’s time at Madrid. He dreamed of the huge undertaking he was facing, a work of unknown dimensions that went far beyond his work as a mere coach. Not a press conference went by in which he did not use the word ‘construction’. From the moment he, along with Mendes, began negotiating his contract with Sánchez, he was moved by a determination to start something that would climax in administrative greatness. After winning his second Champions League he felt ready to do more than just coach. His role model was Sir Alex Ferguson. Mourinho did not originally conceive Chamartín as merely a stepping stone. A trusted ally of Mendes said that Mourinho’s plan was to install himself there for good: ‘He believed

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