The world of sports, and especially football, hides characters who rarely show their faces before public opinion but who greatly influence the most important transactions. Kia Joorabchian (Tehran, 1971) is one of those names that appears on the scene every time there is a big signing in Europe and, more frequently, if a Brazilian player is involved in the operation. His last participation has been in the movement that has led Malcom to the.
The new Brazilian winger for the Catalans is just the tip of Joorabchian’s spear, one of the people who moves the most money with his transfers. Despite being considered a footballer’s agent, the Iranian-born British citizen with a Canadian passport lacks a license as an agent and has always called himself “an investment manager.”
Joorabchian grew up in business with a Russian oligarch, Boris Berezovsky, and another Georgian, Arkady Patarkatsishvili. He was closely related to both in his early business, it is also speculated that he was a partner of Roman Abramovich, and once in the world of football he has always participated as an intermediary between clubs, players and agents, having collaborated with almost all the major European teams. .
Joorabchian describes himself as an adviser on player rights and club contracts and transfers.
Liverpool, Inter Milan, Manchester City, Juventus, PSG, Chelsea or Benfica are some of the entities that at some point during the last 15 years have been seen in negotiations with this Iranian. In Spain, the former, and Barcelona more often now, have also been linked to Joorabchian. With the white team, he participated in the sale of Robinho to Manchester City in 2008 on the same days that the English club passed into the hands of Al-Fahim, the current owner, and according to the newspaper As, before signing for Barcelona, he offered Malcom to the board of Florentino Pérez.
It is precisely with the culés with which he achieved his most notorious transfer. Last January he advised Philippe Coutinho to change Liverpool for Barcelona, after paying 150 million euros. A movement that he had already made with Barcelona and André Gomes in 2016, he has repeated with Malcom to get him out of Girondins de Bordeaux and he did it for the first time at the Camp Nou in 2010, when he completed the signing of Mascherano.
Joorabchian, Mascherano and Tevez
But before taking the Argentine to Barcelona, Joorabchian was already involved in the most notorious transfer of the ‘little boss’. In 2004 he was the founder and president of the investment fund Media Sports Investment (MSI), a company that launched to buy the Brazilian Corinthians after paying 35 million dollars. Through this amount, MSI signed to control the management of the club for ten years, take 51% of the income from television, ticket sales and advertising and 80% of the transfer income. To relaunch the historic team, the fund obtained the signings of several stars, but the incorporations of Carlos Tévez, the Rio de Janeiro striker Nilmar and Mascherano himself stood out.
Together they won the Brasileirao and the following year Joorabchian sent the two Argentines, whose rights he owned, on loan to West Ham to try to sell them later for historic figures. But MSI’s plan, which also involved taking over the English entity, did not go as expected. The fund could not reach an agreement with the Londoners to carry out the purchase, the lack of transparency in the transfers alerted UEFA, Mascherano ended up at Liverpool in winter and Tévez went to Manchester United in August 2007, two years before of being transferred to Manchester City, with the intermediation of Joorabchian again.
This movement meant a before and after for the Premier League, which prohibited the ownership of players by third parties. West Ham was fined eight million euros for the signing of the two Argentines and only the purchase of the club by an Icelandic businessman saved the team from administrative relegation. After this operation MSI gradually disappeared without the participation of Joorabchian.
It is estimated that he has participated in more than fifty transfers between European, South American and Asian clubs in recent years.
In addition to all the team changes that Tévez has undergone (Juventus, Shanghai Greenland Shenhua and Boca Juniors), the Iranian intermediary has participated in several transfers since 2008. Robinho’s transfers to Milan, Santos, Guangzhou Evergrande and Atlético Mineiro, the star of Ramires from Benfica to Chelsea before leaving for Jiangsu Suning, the continuous exchanges of David Luiz between Benfica, Chelsea and PSG, the signing of Marquinhos by the Parisians after standing out in Roma, the arrival of Willian in London or the purchase of Oscar for Chelsea and his departure to Shanghai SIPG have been some of his most notorious operations.
In all these operations in which Brazilians have been involved, Chelsea has been very present, hence its alleged ties with Abramovich, but if it has negotiated with a club in recent years that has been Inter Milan.
In 2016 Joorabchian brought Joao Mario and Gabriel Barbosa to the Italian team, two promising players who have never really exploded in the ‘Nerazzurri’. Barbosa is now at Santos after several assignments, but will have to return to Inter in the winter, while Joao Mario has been declared transferable by Luciano Spalletti. In addition, before the Rome-Barcelona mess with Malcom, the Brazilian was very close to landing in Milan due to these contacts between the team and the intermediary.
A network of negotiations between clubs, agents and players that has made Kia Joorabchian one of the most influential people in the football transfer market and a regular in high places. On more than one occasion, the Iranian has been seen in boxes of the most decisive matches in Europe establishing relations with the great leaders while waiting for another operation in which he is involved.
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