Ed Woodward was with a group of reporters in early 2014 when his Blackberry, sitting on the table in front of him, started ringing. One of the assembled throng took a light-hearted guess at the identity of the caller at which point the Manchester United executive vice-chairman raised his phone and happily volunteered that it was Jorge Mendes trying to get through. If there was a slight air of a man in thrall to the caller, it was also a case of Woodward deliberately playing to the crowd and sending himself up but then he is by no means the only executive of a leading club to have the so-called “super-agent”, and arguably the sport’s most powerful figure, on speed dial.

As Jose Mourinho, Mendes’s second most famous client after Cristiano Ronaldo, prepares to be announced as United’s new manager, there are signs of this being the year that Mendes strikes back, at Old Trafford certainly but further afield, too. A relatively difficult past 12 months for Mendes and his Gestifute agency had led to suggestions in some quarters that the 50-year-old had overreached but the critics should probably have known better than to underestimate the game’s most influential dealmaker.