Raiola was born in 1967 in Nocera Inferiore, Salerno, in southern Italy. He moved to the Dutch city of Haarlem in 1968 with his parents. Growing up in the Netherlands, Raiola later worked in his family's Italian restaurant called "Napoli" and enrolled into law school. His favourite pass time was table tennis, where he played for his local club, Gredi Vinus, and won the title for best player over 90kg.. In 1987, Raiola started his own company. In addition to his business, Raiola also focused on a career in football. At the age of 22, he joined the board of HFC Haarlem, a local club. His stint at the club was short, however; in his own words, he voluntarily resigned because the rest of the board were "too conservative".[clarification needed]
After a brief adventure as a player and administrator, Raiola remained involved in the football world, this time as a football agent. He began working at Sports Promotions, a sports agent company, and assisted in the transfers several high-profile Dutch players to Italian clubs, including Ajax player Bryan Roy (in 1992 to Foggia), Marciano Vink (in 1993 to Genoa), Wim Jonk and Dennis Bergkamp (both in 1993 to Internazionale) and Michel Kreek (in 1994 to Padua). After a while, however, he decided to leave the company and start his own business. His first independent big transfer was Pavel Nedvěd's signing from Sparta Prague for Lazio following his impressive performance at UEFA Euro 1996, where Nedvěd's Czech Republic reached the tournament final.
Just after the turn of the century, Raiola came to Ajax with his own business.[clarification needed] It earned him several new clients, including then-young stars Zlatan Ibrahimović, Mido and Maxwell. On 31 August 2004, the last day of the summer transfer window, Raiola successfully negotiated Ibrahimović's transfer to Juventus for €16 million.[citation needed] Maxwell and Zdeněk Grygera, however, decided not to renew their contracts with Ajax, allowing both players to leave on free transfers.[clarification needed] After these transfers, Ajax for a long time did no business with Raiola.
Even without cooperation from Ajax, however, Raiola continued with a string of successful transfers: he negotiated Ibrahimović's later transfers to Inter (in 2006) and Barcelona (in 2009), while from 2010 to 2011, Raiola was involved in five Milan transfers, including Ibrahimović, Robinho, Mark van Bommel, Urby Emanuelson and Dídac Vilà, despite not all being his clients.[clarification needed]
Today, more than 20 players playing in European leagues are represented by Raiola.[4] He currently resides in Monaco. In 2008, he was involved in two disciplinary hearings instigated by the Federazione Italiana Giuoco Calcio (FIGC) for transfer irregularities.[5][6][7][8]
