Raiola took responsibility for Donnarumma contract decision, blames ‘death threats’

The Gianluigi Donnarumma saga took another startling turn tonight as Mino Raiola, Gigio’s agent, took to the airwaves in an attempt to clear the air. I will state at this point that my Italian is rusty - so some words may have gotten a little lost in translation.

Mino started off strong - declaring that he takes full responsibility for the decision. We already knew that anyway. However, the real meat of the story is in Raiola’s description of negotiations.

The super-agent states that Milan threatened both himself and his client with ‘death’ and a season the bench. One isn’t sure why the Milan management would go to the extremes of murdering Raiola, Donnarumma, and Donnarumma’s family when they could just bench the player. It’s almost certain that Fassone and Mirabelli don’t have the skills to kill Gianluigi Donnarumma. Of course, death threats are absolutely nothing to joke about - but the words of Mino Raiola have to be taken with a pinch of salt. For one, it is a single side of a story with multiple parts and two, If his client was threatened with death - where are the police? A lot doesn’t add up.

Mino went on to say that Gigio was excluded at Milan and given the cold shoulder. He also describes the situation as violent. Raiola picked out Mirabelli as a villain in the saga and stated that Donnarumma was bullied by Mirabelli and management. This is believable - and it’s awful behavior if true. Something that should be punished. It is believed at this point that the threat to ‘bench’ Donnarumma was the catalyst for a breakdown. Mino states that this is the point where he involved himself as Donnarumma did not want to sit out a year - at any point.

If true - this is awful behavior from Milan’s new ownership, but the difficulty here is that the words are not coming from Donnarumma, but his proxy. A proxy with an unstable ethical background. Milan had every right to not play Donnarumma - no player is bigger than the club, but bullying? It’s not on. Ideally, this story will not be true.

Milan’s CEO Marco Fassone will be speaking to the media to respond to Mino’s accusations tomorrow and we’ll dig into that. As for now, who knows what to believe?

Forza Milan.