Haaland's Brazilian businesswoman who became football's first female 'super agent': 'They think we don't understand the subject'

Rafaela Pimenta is the agent of Erling Haaland, the Norwegian star who will face Brazil on Sunday
BBC Sport
Rafaela Pimenta has never scored a goal or commanded a team from the sidelines. Still, at 53 years old, she is the only football representative on Forbes magazine's "50 Over 50" list in 2026.
Every year, Forbes publishes a global list of 50 women who have achieved prominent and influential positions, becoming references in their fields.
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In this year's edition, the Brazilian shares space with names such as actress Penélope Cruz and Reverend Sarah Mullally, the first woman to hold the position of Archbishop of Canterbury.
Pimenta runs Tatica, a high-end athlete agency based in Monaco.
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Her impressive client portfolio includes Norwegian superstar Erling Haaland - who is set to take the field against Brazil next Sunday (5/7) for the round of 16 match of the 2026 World Cup.
The first woman to become a football "super agent", the Brazilian exerts enormous influence behind the scenes in a sport historically dominated by men.
Throughout her career, she has led some of the biggest negotiations in world football.
In 2022, he received the Best Transfer of the Year award at the Globe Soccer Awards after negotiating Haaland with Manchester City.
In 2026, Pimenta was also in charge of renewing the Norwegian's contract with the English club until 2034.
In addition to him, Pimenta manages the Mexican jewel Gilberto Mora, 17 years old, who debuted in this year's World Cup, among other big names in football.
Despite this, the Brazilian claims that there is no room for accommodation.
"I always say: you are only as good as your last transfer window. If If we make a mistake, if we do a bad job, it's over. So what we did ten years ago, a year or six months ago doesn't matter anymore. What's interesting about this job is that you need to prove yourself every day and be creative every day, because everything changes all the time."
But before becoming a player agent, Rafaela Pimenta worked as a teacher in Brazil. His relationship with football began exactly in the classroom.
In an interview with BBC Sports in February this year, she said that she had difficulty keeping students' attention and thought about structuring classes around the contractual aspects of sport - which interested her from a legal point of view.
She was introduced to a former football player and started using him as the topic of her classes. From then on, more discussions arose and Rafaela ended up participating in negotiations for people who wanted to get involved with football clubs in Brazil.
After that, he started working with agents who tried to bring players to Brazil or take them abroad.
"I really liked the idea of football and I thought: 'Let's see if this can work'. I wasn't sure it would work because times were different and the agents were just starting out, so it could have gone wrong many times."
The partnership with Mino Raiola
Swedish player Ibrahimovic alongside his agent Mino Raiola at the World Cup 2018
Getty Images via BBC
But there is a common misconception about Rafaela Pimenta's career: that she simply took over the place left by the Italian Mino Raiola after the businessman's untimely death in April 2022.
Although she worked side by side with one of the most controversial figures in world football, known mainly for having led the career of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Pimenta has always built her own trajectory.
They met during negotiations in Brazil. Raiola wanted to do business in a certain way, but the Brazilian, a lawyer at the time, said that wasn't possible and there was almost a clash of personalities.
They had a meeting, Raiola left, but later decided that he wanted to work with Pimenta because he was attracted to the way she refused to simply accept his word or agree with everything he said just to have an easier life or enter the privileged circle. He wanted someone to stand up to him.
"He said I was the only person who had the courage to say 'no' to him. Everyone else just wanted his money and accepted even the craziest ideas," he recalls.
"We had a lot of fights, throwing things in each other's faces, shouting at each other, theatrical and comical fights. But I would say that, deep down, we never had a real disagreement because, above all, I have to say that Mino always respected the agreement. we did. This is what you do, this is what I do."
After Raiola's death, Pimenta started to work with some of the people the Italian businessman worked with, but she already had her own agency, with 17-year-old Mexican Gilberto Mora being one of her first clients.
"It was a great adventure to come to Europe as an immigrant, as a woman in a sector dominated by men, in a sector that, at the time, was seen in an even worse light than today. face reality: there are many challenges related to agents and practices that are not acceptable. It's a challenging job. It could have gone wrong. And every day it can go wrong."
The time she was mistaken for a prostitute
Not all experiences in her career, however, were positive - especially when it comes to gender inequality.
"When I started working with this, there were very few women in decision-making roles. counting on one hand."
"I saw a lot of women working in the clubs, performing important roles and participating in decisions, but without receiving due recognition."
Pimenta says that the clubs had a similar structure: a long corridor in which the last door was always the room of those who really made the decisions.
"Normally, the woman would stop before the last door, and behind her there was a man", he says.
"It was curious because I would go to the last door, talk to the executive director, the sports director or whoever it was. And I met a lot of women who stopped before that door and felt empowered when they saw that I was walking through it," she adds.
"There is this image that women compete too much with each other. I think that, if we know how to deal with it, it doesn't have to be like that many times. On several occasions, she says, the fact that she is a woman was used as a way of trying to destabilize her.
"I think that, many years ago, this issue of gender was much stronger. There was a long evolution from a first meeting in which a sporting director said to me: 'So you really exist? I thought you were a Brazilian prostitute.', to where we are today."
Pimenta remembers another episode, which occurred about two years ago, during the negotiation of a contract.
Beside him was a lawyer hired exclusively to help with legal writing, in a foreign language.
"We entered into a very tough negotiation with the club. In the end, the result was very good for the client. Then one of the men on the other side of the table approached the lawyer, who hadn't opened his mouth until then because he was waiting for the moment to write something, and said: 'You taught her well, she knows our football well'", he recalls.
"And the man said that as a compliment, as a nice joke. Some people have so deeply ingrained the idea that women are inferior to men or that women don't understand football that, even when they try to be kind, they end up being prejudiced. I don't accept that, not even when it comes disguised as kindness."
Pimenta says that her main motivation today is to make this path within football a little easier for the next generations of women. In addition to acting as an agent, she is also a teacher on courses for agents organized by UEFA (Union of European Football Federations) and the international association of the category.
Often, young women ask for advice on how to build a career in football.
"And I say: 'Don't accept abuse. You don't have to accept any abuse. And you don't need to sexualize yourself to be someone in this industry. You don't have to be beautiful, sexy or accept advances to get space. That won't give you space. It's going to take her down a very bad path.' I was there for 18 hours", he recalls.
"Today that would be impossible. It is necessary to prepare all the documentation a week in advance, sometimes a month or even six months in advance, because there are many issues to resolve: labor legislation, taxes, local laws."
But, according to her, the most profound transformation happened outside the four lines. The players "started to function like real companies" and, as a result, new opportunities on the field grew a lot, especially in relation to social networks.
Erling Haaland, for example, is a superstar. He has a YouTube channel with 2 million views. subscribers and almost 45 million followers on Instagram. And with this status also comes enormous demand and expectations.
"In the past, players were expected to train in the morning and play on the weekend. The rest of the time was spent shopping with his wife or playing video games. That was basically it", he says.
"You didn't see bankers chasing football players. I didn't see real estate developers wanting to associate their projects with players. Today, everyone wants a part of that."
In Pimenta's assessment, however, all these changes were not accompanied by a balance in relations between clubs and athletes, and players continue to have little autonomy over their own careers.
The businesswoman criticizes, for example, representation contracts that oblige athletes to pay fines if they decide to change agents.
"If I don't do a good job, I shouldn't expect the player to continue with me in the next window. One thing I hate is this mandate with a fine clause. You sign with me to represent you, and if you want to change agents, you need to pay me a fine. Why? If you want to change agents, go and change."
"It's like a marriage. Imagine that your wife wants to get a divorce and, for that, you have to pay her. You would feel very wronged. This is how the player should feel. They should never sign something that limits their freedom."
According to Pimenta, the same principle should guide the transfer system. For her, "clubs have too much power" and players often become hostages to circumstances.
"I don't disagree with the transfer system. It is necessary for the entire system to function. I'm not advocating chaos. I also don't think players should just do whatever they want. But I believe we need more balance. Today, there is an imbalance."
In practice, he says, many deals fail to happen because clubs maintain almost absolute control over the athletes' situation.
"There is always a player who could have been traded, who needed to leave, but the club demanded another 1 million pounds."
The debate gained strength in October 2024, when the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that part of FIFA's rules regulating player transfers violates European legislation.
After following the decision, the entity implemented a provisional model to calculate compensation and redistribute the burden of proof in cases of breach of contract.
For Pimenta, the discussion goes beyond legal rules and involves the way players are treated in an increasingly billion-dollar sport.
"Football used to be more human," he says.
"A football director or a club owner had a special relationship with the player. If an athlete came and said: 'Please, I need to leave', they would look for a solution."
"Today, football has become such a big business that there is a risk of players being seen as just financial assets. An asset has no voice, no feelings, no human needs."
"The challenge is to find a balance between the financial asset and the human being."

Source: G1