Talent Cardoso Varela (16) is now officially at Dinamo Zagreb. But many questions arise about the agent and the father in the background.
Ever since Sepp Herberger, it has been known that “a game lasts 90 minutes.” But how long does a transfer saga actually last? Well, in Cardoso Varela’s case, we shouldn’t expect a quick end to it. The talented youngster, who was hastily shipped off to Croatia in the summer of 2024, is now officially registered with Dinamo Zagreb. However, the 16-year-old’s path to the Croatian serial champion was so convoluted that FIFA will almost certainly take another look at the matter – not least because Varela’s former club, FC Porto, will exhaust its legal options with the world governing body.
First, a brief summary of the background: After his development contract with Porto expired, two agents wanted to place Varela with the Croatian fourth division team NK Dinamo Odranski Obrez because his father had found work in Zagreb. Varela claimed that he had been subjected to psychological terror at Porto and that he himself had been threatened. Porto’s president André Villas-Boas, who suspected that there was something fishy about the trip to the Balkans, refuted this. The former top coach said that Varela Jr. had told him that he would like to stay in Porto but was afraid of his uncle, Wilson Sardinha. This is one of the two agents who brought the then-15-year-old to Croatia.
Dinamo Zagreb fulfil statutes
Research, however, tends to support Villas-Boas’s suspicion. Because the father’s Croatian employer – and with regard to the FIFA transfer statutes, the job is quite important – is Branimir Majdak, a friend, perhaps even an associate of the player agent Andy Bara. He is known for so-called bridge transfers, in which the training club ultimately gets little or nothing.
After Varela could not be registered with the fourth division club for months, Dinamo Zagreb stepped in, a club that the associations could not say no to. According to the statutes, 16-year-olds are allowed to transfer within the EU if the new club can offer training at the highest level and a good education. These are central building blocks for the permission of minor transfers.
A post raises questions
However, there are all sorts of questionable aspects, especially regarding the background to this case, which could come back to haunt the agents involved. For example, there is a post by Varela on the social network Instagram on February 16, the day his transfer was made official. “@fc porto serei sempre grato a esse clube maravilhoso e obrigado por tudo”, he wrote. In English: ‘@fc porto I will always be grateful to this wonderful club and thank you for everything.’ A thank you to the ex-club, which, according to Varela’s father, terrorized the boy? That raises questions.
Now the father could refer to the boy’s mother, Rosaria Mandume, who lives in Luanda, Angola. Last summer, when Odranski Obrez was registered, she had confirmed the father’s accusations in a letter. But: is a correspondence between the mother and an employee of FC Porto, which is about the aforementioned letter.
Mother: “Maybe I signed it, but maybe it was written in English, but I don’t remember signing it. Because the documents that are handed to me are written in English, and I don’t speak English.”
Posto employee: “But did you read the part that is in Portuguese?”
Mother: “Yes I did!!! But I didn’t say anything of what it says there.”
Posto employee: “Ok, thank you. This is very serious.”
Mother: “I’m doing everything I can to be there, not doing anything without me there, because this is really very serious.”
Posto employee: “We are at your side.”
Mother: “Thank you for being by my side.”
Like the boy’s post, this gives the impression that the accusations against FC Porto are fictitious and made up by the father and the agents involved, against whom the club is making further accusations. A complaint to FIFA indicates that a few weeks after the second failed registration at Odranski Obrez in October, a player agent from the Middle East contacted FC Porto and demanded 1.5 million euros for the boy on behalf of Sardinha and Bara. Then he could return to Porto. A request for comment from Bara’s agency Niagara Sports was not answered.
Contradictions arise
Agent Bara recently gave an interview to Croatian media in which he stuck to the version spread by the father that Porto was exerting pressure. Bara then brought Croatia into play and Majdak’s company because Varela senior had previously worked in the relevant industry. Amazing. Two things emerge from the correspondence surrounding the failed attempts to register at Odranski Obrez that do not fit with this version at all: firstly, that Varela senior had already worked in a beach bar in the Croatian seaside paradise of Zadar before Majdak employed him. On the other hand, FIFA has determined that the father has not played an active role in the boy’s life since 2021, when he moved to London for work. Resolving these contradictions could indeed take longer than 90 minutes.
