There’s a false impression about Pimenta that she has stepped into the function left by Mino Raiola’s premature dying in April 2020.

Pimenta did work carefully with considered one of soccer’s most controversial characters however proper from the beginning, she was her personal girl; it was one of many most important causes Raiola wished to work along with her, and tracked her down in her native Brazil after an earlier encounter when, as a professional lawyer, she was requested to behave as an interpreter on a deal.

“He mentioned I used to be the one one who mentioned no to him and since all of the others simply wished his cash, they might say sure to the craziest tasks,” she recollects.

“I assumed it will final 5 minutes. It lasted 35 years.”

Sadly, not all her experiences in that point had been optimistic, particularly relating to gender inequality.

“Once I was doing this years in the past, there have been only a few ladies in deciding positions,” mentioned Pimenta.

“There was Marina [Granovskaia] at Chelsea however general, you can depend them in your fingers.

“What I might see had been many ladies working in golf equipment doing plenty of issues that had been decision-making however not being acknowledged.

“It was a form of a hall, and it will at all times be the identical. Scouting, technical, secretary, decision-maker. You’d stroll previous everyone and get to the final door. Behind the final door can be a person.”

Pimenta says she was helped in her personal profession by ladies who responded to the actual fact she gained entry to the ultimate ‘door’.

Nonetheless, the response of the lads whose area she was coming into was typically unfavorable.

“We have now come a good distance from a primary assembly I had with a sports activities director who mentioned to me, ‘you actually exist, I assumed you had been a hooker from Brazil’, to the place we’re in the present day however many males nonetheless use gender to unbalance you.

“They may speak behind my again to make me really feel I am fragile or have much less energy.”

Pimenta recounts a narrative from two years in the past, she haggled over a contract with a membership within the presence of a lawyer she employed purely for his experience in writing the language she was negotiating in.

As soon as the deal was struck, the membership official mentioned to the lawyer ‘you taught her nicely’.

“The man meant it as a praise,” mentioned Pimenta. “He was making an attempt to be good. It was unbelievable.”