Once upon a time there were the seven sisters of Italian football. It was the nineties when Milan, Juventus, Inter, Parma, Fiorentina, Lazio and Roma truly made Serie A the most beautiful championship in the world, with exciting battles on the pitch – in the hunt for the Scudetto – but also outside, in the transfer market, ready to compete with billions of old lire for the most sought after champions of the time.
Thirty years later the geography of football appears completely redesigned. We can talk about seven sisters again. But in another sense and using another language: American.
Between returns and news
By a curious twist of fate, five of the protagonists of that extraordinary and almost unrepeatable Italian football epic, which saw our clubs also dominate in Europe, now boast American ownership. Of the “historic” seven sisters, only Juventus and Lazio still maintain Italian ownership: the Juventus club of the Agnelli family and Claudio Lotito’s Lazio.
Parma and Inter have just joined the other three: Milan, with the RedBird giant represented by Gerry Cardinale, Fiorentina under owner Rocco Commisso and finally Roma, led by the Friedkin group: the yellow and blue club became stars and stripes in 2020 , with the advent of Kyle Krause, while the Nerazzurri one just in the last few hours, with the move to the Californian fund Oaktree Capital Management, after «the failure to repay the three-year loan granted to the Inter holding companies – explained a note released yesterday -, which expired on 21 May 2024 with a total balance of approximately 395 million euros”.
The other “American sisters” are instead two “new entries” which, just before the start of the new millennium, experienced alternating fortunes: Atalanta and Genoa. The Orobic club, which with the Percassi family at the helm has become a virtuous model in combining excellent sporting results with balanced financial and organizational management, today belongs to Stephen Pagliuca’s Bain Capital. Grifone instead passed under the control of 777 Partners and, after returning to Serie A, has just achieved a quiet salvation. An eighth could be added to these: this is Venezia, which is currently playing in the play-offs and chaired by the American Duncan Niederauer. In the upcoming Serie A there are other foreign properties: the Bologna of the Canadian Joey Saputo and the other newly promoted Como of the Indonesian Hartono.
Times change
A clear sign of changing times and of the need, for clubs that want to compete at high levels, of fresh capital capable of ensuring a strong investment capacity, also in terms of infrastructure, i.e. new stadiums. «If until recently, Milan and Inter were in the hands of two Italian entrepreneurs, even Milanese, and now we have moved on to funds, it means that the era of romanticism is over» the reflection of Ernesto Pellegrini, former president of the Nerazzurri . But he adds: «The fan is relatively interested in who is in charge and who is the owner. The important thing is that your favorite team wins.” With all due respect to the most nostalgic.
