Manchester City transfer news: Pep Guardiola 'doesn't have the balls to meet me', says football agent Mino Raiola

Raiola has already criticised Jürgen Klopp this week and has not taken aim at Guardiola

Mino Raiola has launched a scathing verbal attack on Pep Guardiola (Getty)

Outspoken football agent Mino Raiola has continued his string of outbursts since the closure of the transfer window by taking aim at Pep Guardiola after claiming the Manchester City manager “doesn’t have the balls” to meet him.

Raiola has already accused Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp of treating the club’s former striker Mario Balotelli “like s***” after freezing him out of the first team, with the Italian moving on to French side Nice on a free transfer.

The Dutch agent, who received close to £30m in agent fees this summer after structuring the transfers of Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Paul Pogba to Manchester United this summer, has now gone into details about his poor relationship with Guardiola.

The pair fell out over Guardiola’s treatment of Ibrahimovic while the were both at Barcelona, with guardiola electing to shift the Swedish striker to a wide role in order to accommodate Lionel Messi in the centre of his attack.

"Everyone knows I don't like him," Raioa told Spanish radio station Cadena Cope about Guardiola.

"I like people who have a different character to Guardiola.

"I don't hate him... because hate consumes you. But I don't like him. He's a good coach but his football is a bit boring to me..."

With Raiola one of the most powerful figures in football given his ability to structure moves for some of the leading players in the world, City could well come across Raiola in future transfer windows. The club have been linked with Everton striker Romelu Lukaku in the past, with the Belgian represented by Raiola, and despite City spending around £990m since their 2008 takeover, they were a notable absentee from the race to sign Pogba this summer.

Raiola added that while he would have no problem with negotiating with either City or Guardiola, he accused the Spaniard of intentionally avoiding him.

"Me, I'm a professional. I want to do the best for my clients,” said Raiola. "He? He doesn't have the balls to sit down with me.”

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Raiola’s reputation goes before him as one of the most outspoken figures in football, and is often found to be making bold claims to the media in order to secure his clients either a lucrative transfer or an improved contract. Having negotiated Balotelli’s release from his Liverpool contract in order top secure a move to Nice, Raiola launched a stern verbal attack on Klopp, and claimed that the German never gave him a chance to show he could succeed at Anfield.

“At the end of the day he [Balotelli] was a player of Liverpool and you need to treat him with respect," Raiola said on Talksport.


 Balotelli joined Nice on transfer deadline day 
 (Getty)

"And he didn't do that, because several times Mario asked to have a friendly match, to have training. At the end of the day you need 90 minutes, you need to play a little bit.

“He never considered him for 60 days. Never let him play for 90 minutes. I’m not judging him as a trainer, but you have to let him play.


 Raiola insists he does not need to have a good relationship with Klopp or Guardiola 
 (Getty)

“I don’t need to go to Klopp to do business. If Klopp wants a player that I represent and he wants to talk to me, good. If he doesn't want to talk to me, I can say to my player choose another agent or go with the lawyer - I will never stand in the middle of the interests of my player. But it doesn't mean I have to shut up.

"I have no problem to talk to Liverpool. If I have to be afraid of speaking out my mind because I lose a deal, then I lose my powers.”