Rafaela Pimenta has never scored a goal or managed a team. But the 53-year-old is the only footballer to be included in Forbes’ 2026 “50 Over 50” list.
Every January, the global media company names 50 women whose stature and influence make them beacons for others to follow.
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Oscar-winning actress Penelope Cruz was also present, as was Dame Sarah Mulally, the first female Archbishop of Canterbury.
As the first female super agent in football, Brazilian Pimenta has great influence.
Her impressive stable of clients include Manchester City striker Erling Haaland, Liverpool manager Arne Slott and 17-year-old Mexican prodigy Gilberto Mora.
She radiated enthusiasm as she arrived on time for an exclusive interview with BBC Sport. Once the cameras started rolling, Pimenta was deadly serious as she covered a range of topics, including the treatment of women on the football field.
But, on the eve of deadline day, let’s start with her concerns about the current transfer system.
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“Changes need to be made,” she explains. “The club has too much power.
“Players sometimes become hostages to situations. I’m not playing for chaos. We need the transfer system to make the whole thing work. But we need more balance.
“We’re in the transfer window and I can bet you because I see people crying at the end of every transfer window. There’s always a player crying because he could have left and needs to leave and the club says they want £1 million more.”
In October 2024, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) found that some rules implemented by world governing body FIFA, which regulate how some football transfers work, breached EU law.
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FIFA subsequently introduced a provisional framework based on the calculation of liquidated damages and the burden of proof.
“Football used to be more humane,” Pimenta added. “The director of football or the owner will have a special relationship with the players. If a player goes to them and says ‘Please, I need to go’, they will find a solution.
“Today, football has become a business and players risk becoming assets on a balance sheet. Assets have no say, no emotions, no human needs.
“The challenge is finding the balance between assets and people.”
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“If we mess up, it’s dead.”
Pimenta’s career has gone through a period of dramatic change.
Haaland is a superstar. With that comes needs and expectations. Pimenta believes that agents who still think they are omnipotent are either “delusional” or making promises they can’t keep.
“I remember one transfer, we arrived at the club and it was closed until the deal was done. I stayed for 18 hours,” she explained.
“Today that’s not possible. You need documents a week ago, maybe a month or six months ago, because there are so many things that need to be sorted out: labor, taxes, local laws.
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“The players became mini-corporations because the opportunities off the field were so much greater.”
Haaland has his own YouTube channel with 1.28 million subscribers.
“In the past, if a player worked in media, he might do a monthly publication, once,” Pimenta said.
“Today you have media opportunities, digital opportunities, sponsors, investors, startups, everything you can imagine.”
Although she has a wealth of talent on her radar, including Manchester United duo Matthijs de Ligt and Nussel Mazraoui, she is not prepared to rest on her laurels.
“You have to prove yourself every day,” she said.
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“If we mess up, we’re dead. Football has no memory on the pitch and neither does the transfer window. It doesn’t matter what we did 10 years ago, a year ago, six months ago.”
Delusional agent mistaken for ‘prostitute’
There is a misconception about Pimenta that she has taken over the role left behind by Mino Raiola’s untimely death in April 2020.
Pimenta did work closely with one of football’s most controversial figures, but from the start she was her own woman; this was one of the main reasons why Raiola wanted to work with her, finding her after an earlier encounter when she, a qualified lawyer, was asked to act as translator for a deal.
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“He said I was the only one who said ‘no’ to him because everyone else just wanted his money, so they would say ‘yes’ to the craziest projects,” she recalled.
“I thought it would last five minutes. It lasted 35 years.”
Sadly, her experiences at the time were not all positive, especially when it came to gender inequality.
“When I did this a few years ago, there were very few women in decision-making positions,” Pimenta said.
“There’s Marina [Granovskaia] At Chelsea, but overall, you can count them on your fingers.
“I would see a lot of women working in clubs doing a lot of decision-making but not getting credit for it.
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“It’s like a hallway, and it’s always the same. Scouts, tech, secretaries, decision-makers. You go through everyone and get to the last door. There’s a person behind the last door.”
Pimenta said she was helped in her career by women who responded to her entry into the final “door.”
However, the response from men in the field she entered was often negative.
“We have come a long way from the first time I met a sporting director who said to me, ‘You really exist, I thought you were a prostitute from Brazil’, but many men still use gender to keep you off balance.
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“They might talk behind my back and make me feel vulnerable or less powerful.”
Pimenta recounted a story two years ago when she negotiated a contract with a club in the presence of a lawyer, purely because of his expertise in writing the language of her negotiations.
After the deal was struck, club officials told the lawyer “you taught her well.”
“The guy meant it as a compliment,” Pimenta said. “He was trying to be nice. It was unbelievable.”
Standing up for women in a male-dominated industry
Unsurprisingly, Pimenta has issues with disgraced former Spanish Football Federation president Luis Rubiales, who was ultimately found guilty of sexual assault after kissing captain Jeanne Hermoso without her consent after Spain won the 2023 World Cup.
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“When he presents Messi with the trophy, will he kiss Messi on the mouth or on the cheek?” she asked. “If he did that, would he be fired on the spot?
“What’s shocking is not just the act itself, but the fact that it took so long to make the decision.”
Pimenta ended with a message to all women in football.
“It’s ingrained for some people that women are inferior to men, or that women don’t understand football,” she said.
“They want to be cute to you — and even if they’re cute, they’re going to be biased.
“I don’t accept that. I don’t stand up for me anymore – people respect me enough. But there are other girls coming along. I don’t want them to go through what I went through. If I could make it easier for them, I would.
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“I’m a teacher on the UEFA agent course. Young women come to me and ask me, ‘Do you have any advice?’. Yes. Don’t accept abuse. You don’t have to make yourself sexy to be a figure in this industry.”