Lines between hero and villain are blurred in new Football Leaks film

It has been a while since football heard from Nélio Lucas. As the public face of Doyen Sports – an investment fund based in Malta – the suave Portuguese businessman was briefly one of the game’s most recognised agents, negotiating Marcos Rojo’s transfer to Manchester United and Manchester City’s £42m signing of Eliaquim Mangala, among many others.

But that all changed in September 2015 when a hacker calling himself “John” published details of third-party ownership agreements between Doyen and FC Twente on the Football Leaks website – leading to the Dutch club being banned from European competition for three seasons. “When I gave that click, I opened the door; he just took everything he wanted,” reflects Lucas in a new documentary, A Game of Secrets.

More than seven years on from that click the trial of Rui Pinto – who used the pseudonym John – is finally reaching its conclusion in Portugal, and the Danish director Niels Borchert Holm tells the story of how the former history student ended up being accused of more than 90 crimes – including the alleged attempted blackmail and extortion of Doyen. Pinto declined to appear on screen, clearing the way for Lucas to take centre stage, although Pinto is expected to give evidence in court on Monday , more than three and a half years after he was extradited from Hungary.

Lucas accused Pinto in court testimony last year of inflicting “a real public lynching” and compared himself to “that lady who was raped and then has to explain why she was raped”. The 41-year-old doesn’t hold back in the film either. Lucas does, however, strenuously deny that he and Arif Efendi – the Kazakh-Turkish businessman behind Doyen – tried to organise a prostitute party in Miami to convince Florentino