Arda Turan’s two-year loan at Istanbul Basaksehir has been cut short but he has no intention of returning to Barcelona. You can only imagine the conversation he might have with his agent …At first Mino Raiola was surprised by the sound of his phone ringing. The fact that it was 1am was not the surprising part: as a football agent constantly on the move he had long since grown used to being called at all sorts of strange hours. Usually it would be one of his players with some practical issue: a leaky tap, no internet, a mysterious buzzing noise that would invariably turn out to be the fridge.
Some players wanted to talk business. A few – often players living abroad for the first time – just wanted to talk. One night, very late, Raiola answered his phone to Mario Balotelli, who in a meek voice explained that he was alone in his new house and desperate for company. So Raiola went round and together they sat on his sofa in silence, watching Michael Portillo’s Great Railway Journeys on
BBC Four until Mario dozed off.