Joao Felix: How Chelsea move will unfold

Jacque Talbot

• Updated: 10 Jan 2023 18:09 GMT
• 4 min read

There is a sort of fable about Jorge Mendes’ beginnings.

It says that he was waiting tables in a Portuguese restaurant when he was introduced to a player dining there. The pair struck up a conversation and soon Mendes found his first client. It wasn’t long before he landed Cristiano Ronaldo at Sporting Lisbon, and his empire grew to what it is today.

How much of the rags-to-riches tale is true, only God and Mendes himself know. But the superagent is certainly revered in his home country.

FootballTransfers spoke to a former intermediary of a huge global agency about the man, his compatriot, who they described in almost deity terms. “He is the greatest to do what he does who ever lived,” they stated.

READ MORE: Chelsea to complete Joao Felix signing

Mendes - or rather his company Gestifute - has become an institution almost bigger than some of the elite football clubs in Europe. Just 12 years after he started he brokered four of the biggest transfer deals in the world in the summer of 2014: James Rodriguez to Real Madrid from Monaco for €70m, Angel Di María from Real Madrid to Manchester United for €67m, Diego Costa from Atletico Madrid to Chelsea for €36m, and defender Eliaquim Mangala from Porto to Manchester City for €35 million. Mendes’ kingdom has reached vaster levels since.

Todd Boehly stepped down from his sporting director role at Chelsea this week - but not before signing off the loan move of Joao Felix to his club. It’s a move that in some ways really highlights the stark power Mendes possesses in the game. Chelsea, despite their pursuits - as per Ben Jacobs - to make it an option-to-buy, ended up agreeing to a straight-up loan. While Atletico, hoping for a bigger sum than they got, ended up greenlighting the fee of €11million.

The winners here really are Mendes and Felix. Is this a deal that would have gotten over the line had Felix been with another agency? It’s doubtful. There are plenty of attacking options for Chelsea to choose from across the world - and without far fewer complications.

It’s been well-documented already that Mendes and Boehly have struck up a sort of bond. There were talks about Cristiano Ronaldo coming to join Chelsea in the summer - something that likely would have happened had Thomas Tuchel not interjected. Obviously, it wasn’t the hammer blow that cost the German his job but it certainly didn’t help.

This is not a criticism of Mendes and Gestifute by any measure. The man has done more for Primeira Liga than most could dream The array of talent coming out of that league at present is the highest it’s ever been and clubs and even agencies there needs his influence to seal deals. As FootballTransfers revealed, Mendes took Darwin Nunez from Equipo TMA and made that deal with Liverpool possible, in what was a quite amicable transition, we might add.

In terms of media, we are trenching on dangerous waters: but the use of language use and the collective release of information earlier this week as Felix was reported as agreeing to a deal with Chelsea was quite something to behold. Mendes wanted us to know that Felix was very much in for the long haul, that the ‘project’ appealed to him - a counterintuitive idea since it is just a temporary switch - and that he turned down Arsenal and Man Utd for them. Seldom are rival bidders or approaches mentioned when such stories get released but the reporters clearly thought it was relevant on this occasion.

What happens from here is that either Diego Simeone leaves Atletico- a prospect looking increasingly likely - and Felix is reinstated, or Atletico and Mendes, on the presumption that the player has a superb tenure with the Blues, find a decent buyer for Felix in the summer: a club who has acquired Champions League football and would be willing to splash out on a player who, at that point, would be Premier League-proven.

It’s a deal that benefits a lot of parties - but mostly Mendes and Gestifute.