The most powerful woman in football - meet game's first female super agent

Rafaela Pimenta has never scored a goal or managed a team. But the 53-year-old is the only football entry in Forbes' '50 over 50' list for 2026.

Every January, the global media company publishes the 50 women who have reached a position of status and influence that makes them beacons for others to follow.

Oscar-winning actress Penelope Cruz is there, so too Dame Sarah Mullally - the first female Archbishop of Canterbury.

As football's first female super agent, Brazilian Pimenta is hugely influential.

Her impressive stable of clients includes Manchester City striker Erling Haaland, Liverpool manager Arne Slot and 17-year-old Mexican wonderkid Gilberto Mora.

She radiates warmness as she arrives on time to speak exclusively to BBC Sport. Once the cameras are rolling, Pimenta is deadly serious as she covers a range of topics, including the treatment of women in football.

But, on the eve of deadline day, let's start with her concerns about the present transfer system.

"There needs to be a change," she explains. "There's too much power for clubs.

"Players are sometimes hostages of situations. I'm not fighting for chaos. We need the transfer system for the whole thing to work. But we need more balance.

"We are in a transfer window, and I can bet you, because I see it at the end of every window, somebody will cry. There's always a player crying because he could have gone, needed to go and a club said they want £1m more."

In October 2024, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) found rules implemented by world governing body Fifa, which govern the way some football transfers work, break European Union laws.

Fifa subsequently introduced an interim framework based on the calculation of compensation payable and burden of proof if there is a breach of contract.

"Football used to be more human," Pimenta adds. "A football director or an owner would have a special relationship with the player. If a player went to them and said 'please, I need to go', they would find a solution.

"Today, football is becoming so much of a business there is a risk that players become an asset on the balance sheet. An asset has no voice, no feelings, no human needs.

"The challenge is to find a balance between the asset and the human being."

Pimenta's career has developed over a period of massive change.

Haaland is a superstar. With that, comes demand and expectation. Pimenta argues that agents who still feel they can do everything are either 'delusional' or making promises they can't keep.

"I remember one transfer when we got to the club and closed the doors until the deal was done. I stayed for 18 hours," she explains.

"Today that would be impossible. You need the documents a week before, maybe a month or six months before, because there's so much to address; labour, tax, local law.

"Players became mini companies because the opportunities off the pitch are much bigger."

Haaland has his own YouTube channel, with 1.28m subscribers.

"In the past, if a player did media, it might be a monthly magazine, once," says Pimenta.

"Today you have media opportunities, digital opportunities, sponsors, investors, startups, everything you can imagine."

Despite the impressive array of talent she looks after, which also includes Manchester United duo Matthijs de Ligt and Noussair Mazraoui, she is not prepared to rest on her laurels.

"You must prove yourself every day," she says.

"If we screw it up, it's dead. Football has no memory on the pitch and it's the same with the transfer window. Whatever we did 10 years ago, one year ago, six months ago, it's not relevant."

There is a misconception about Pimenta that she has stepped into the role left by Mino Raiola's untimely death in April 2020.

Pimenta did work closely with one of football's most controversial characters but right from the start, she was her own woman; it was one of the main reasons Raiola wanted to work with her, and tracked her down in her native Brazil after an earlier encounter when, as a qualified lawyer, she was asked to act as an interpreter on a deal.

"He said I was the only one who said no to him and because all the others just wanted his money, they would say yes to the craziest projects," she recalls.

"I thought it would last five minutes. It lasted 35 years."

Sadly, not all her experiences in that time were positive, especially when it comes to gender inequality.

"When I was doing this years ago, there were very few women in deciding positions," said Pimenta.

"There was Marina [Granovskaia] at Chelsea but overall, you could count them on your fingers.

"What I would see were many women working in clubs doing lots of things that were decision-making but not being recognized.

"It was a sort of a corridor, and it would always be the same. Scouting, technical, secretary, decision-maker. You would walk past everybody and get to the last door. Behind the last door would be a man."

Pimenta says she was helped in her own career by women who responded to the fact she gained entry to the final 'door'.

However, the response of the men whose domain she was entering was often negative.

"We have come a long way from a first meeting I had with a sports director who said to me, 'you really exist, I thought you were a hooker from Brazil', to where we are today but many men still use gender to unbalance you.

"They might talk behind my back to make me feel I'm fragile or have less power."

Pimenta recounts a story from two years ago, she haggled over a contract with a club in the presence of a lawyer she hired purely for his expertise in writing the language she was negotiating in.

Once the deal was struck, the club official said to the lawyer 'you taught her well'.

"The guy meant it as a compliment," said Pimenta. "He was trying to be nice. It was unbelievable."

Unsurprisingly, Pimenta has a view on disgraced former Spanish FA president Luis Rubiales, who was eventually convicted of sexual assault after kissing captain Jenni Hermoso without her consent after Spain won the 2023 World Cup.

"Would he have kissed (Lionel) Messi on the mouth, or the cheek, when he gave him a trophy?" she questions. "If he did, would he have been fired on the spot?

"It is not only the act itself that is so shocking, but the fact it took so long to make the decision."

Pimenta ends with a message for all women in the football industry.

"With some people, it's so embedded in them that women are inferior to men or that women don't know football," she said.

"They want to be cute to you - and even when they are cute, they're prejudicial.

"I don't accept it. I'm not standing up for me anymore - people respect me enough. But there's other girls coming. I don't want them to have to go through what I've been through. If I can make it a bit easier for them, I will.

"I'm a teacher on Uefa agents' courses. Young women come to me and say, 'Do you have any advice?'. Yes. Don't take abuse. You don't have to sexualize yourself to be somebody in this industry."