Jorge Mendes Interview

Ana Almeida didn't like seeing Nani switch Sports agents (from her to Mendes)?

Jorge Mendes: I don't know her and I'm not here to accuse anybody. With the experience I've acquired I can tell you that there are people that have signed contracts with players and are there waiting for a Jorge Mendes to show up and take him to a big club.
They want to be glued to the operation without ever having done anything to promote it.
When I transfered Ronaldo to Manchester United I had meetings with Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus, Inter, Arsenal to mention just some of them. He was very close to signing with Arsenal, Wenger wanted him to form an attacking duo with Henry. He went to Manchester because of one thing.............

The exhibition Vs Manchester United in the friendly Vs Sporting?

Jorge Mendes: That's what everybody thinks. Sporting's board of directors had dinner with Manchester's directors on the eve of the game. After that me and my nephew were in Alex Ferguson's room in the "Hotel Quinta da Marinha" for over 2 hours and SAF said something that convinced me that it was the right club for Ronaldo, he said "next year Ronaldo will play 50% of the games". He was going to spare him to help him slowly grow as a player, Manchester was the solution.

Did you advice Quaresma against transfering to Barcelona?

Jorge Mendes: I also had several solutions for him. I asked him where he wanted to move to and he said Barcelona. I told him he should go to Deportivo de la Coruna where he would get to play regularly and where the coach (Javier Irureta) liked his qualities.
Maybe Quaresma arrived at Barcelona at the wrong moment. Had it happened 2 years later he would have found a more stable team, where Deco the most complete midfielder in the world would have helped his affirmation at the club.
In the year he was there things didn't go well for the team. Even though he had some great games and he still had a lot of space to evolve as a player. At FC Porto the arrival of Co Adriaanse was very important, he benched Quaresma and showed him he had to change his mentality and the way he played. But I can garantee you that Barcelona did not want to sell him to FC Porto.



André