Roc Nation’s Michael Yormark on Romelu Lukaku: ‘You have to play to his strengths … I don’t think that happened’

Michael Yormark initially sounds like an American sports agent straight out of central casting as, having started his day as usual at 3.30am because “greatness is a process” which requires dedication, the head of Roc Nation Sports slips into a smooth overview of how it feels to represent a roster of famous athletes including Romelu Lukaku, Kevin De Bruyne and Siya Kolisi. Yormark, an urbane 55-year-old who runs the London office of the company set up by Jay-Z, has always followed a mantra of “every day I’ve got to be great”.

Perhaps this is what you need to say to talk encouragingly to Lukaku each day, while negotiating with Chelsea’s new owner Todd Boehly to ease the return of an unhappy player to Internazionale, or when signing South African rugby’s first black captain soon after the country had won the World Cup. But Yormark is at his most interesting when discussing his new obsession with rugby, which he believes is a “sleeping giant”, or while reflecting on his struggle as an aspiring agent in New York in the late 1980s.

“When I got out of graduate school I thought people would be lining up to hire Michael Yormark,” he says. “I remember sending out 365 résumés and I didn’t get one interview. I ended up in a retail sales job at Sam’s – Samson Clothing Store in Livingston, New Jersey.”

Yormark nods when I ask if he was a good salesman. “I like fashion, so I was quite good. But it was very humbling because I went back to my old town. This went on for a year but all it did was burn a bigger fire inside me. I kept telling myself that when I got that first opportunity I was going to be super-super-successful. Lo and behold, a dear friend of my mother’s, who was a minority owner of the New York Yankees, called me out of