Patience. It’s the key word in the last few weeks at home Olbia Football. After having now definitively given up on the hypothesis repechage – but was there ever a real possibility? – in Serie C, the company chaired by Guido Surace and owned by the Swiss Swiss Pro Promotion try to look ahead to next season which, barring negative surprises, will see the Gallura team register in Serie D after the relegation gained on the pitch.
Days of fire
Patience, it was said. It is the virtue asked by Swiss Pro from the Olbia environment in recent weeks, first and foremost from the employeessportsmen and non-athletes, to whom the tranche of the benefits has not been paid back wages. Many were anxiously awaiting the federal deadline June 4th last but – as already written in recent days – since Olbia does not have to register in the Lega Pro but in the Lega Dilettanti, the deadline has slipped automatically to the next one 10th of July. Over an extra month available: pure oxygen for the management to be able to find a concrete solution to the club’s lack of liquidity. There email with which Surace warned the employees of the delay in payments – a verbatim excerpt: “Due to being prepared with some unexpected financial burdens to be ready for Repechaggio we were unable to advance salaries today”wrote the Swiss-Argentine accountant last June 4 -, written in a more than uncertain Italian, has certified the situation of economic difficulty of the company in via Georgia after the weeks of silence. News that caused a sensation in the city, enough to convince a representative of ultras to show up at the club headquarters to have a face to face meeting with the president. “Civil tones – the club told the press – the fans asked for reassurances on the corporate structure and employee salaries. No acts of intimidation, civil dialogue. They are open to more solutions for the good of the club.” It may be so, but in the meantime in the last days in Olbia the voices have raged again: in the last few hours Surace would have met La Rosa asking the captain to be patient again, waiting for possible good news on the front new investors. With one name above all: Roberto Felleca.
Felleca
Already in spring some rumors had circulated about the possible involvement of the entrepreneur from Selargino in the Gallura club: “Me in the Olbia project? Maybe I’ll go to watch the next match against Sestri Levante (laughs ed.)”She said Felleca to our microphones on March 26th. “We have a special relationship with Ninni Corda, now there is a corporate structure that is starting a project and then we’ll see”, declared the former owner of Como and Foggia, famous clubs he brought back among the professionals after the purgatory called Serie D, leaving the door open on his possible entry into the club. A hypothesis that could now turn into reality, given that according to what was reconstructed by our editorial team, Felleca and Swiss Pro representatives are ready to meet in Milan in the next few days to discuss this possibility. Since March the panorama in Olbia has changed a lot: Surace and company are in clear difficulty in terms of the economic management of the club, with a debt situation that does not allow, as mentioned, the payment of the arrears of salaries to the employees: for this reason the intervention of Felleca would be invaluable in trying to save the sporting and non-sporting fortunes of Olbia. However, it is certainly not an easy path to take, precisely because of the huge debt which hinders the will of any entrepreneur. This is why, to avoid a disastrous ending, SwissPro will have to be able to reconstruct the debt situation as soon as possible, finding new funds capable of reset the red and thus make Olbia attractive on the investor market, laying the foundations for being able to restart in Serie D. At that point Felleca would be ready to take over the 70% of the shares corporate by the Swiss, taking on the responsibility of the club and planning the next Serie D championship. And, as has been said for some time in the city, perhaps mending relations with the former owner Alessandro Marine and his partners, still owners of the remaining 30% of the club: a picture that could also, given the excellent relations between Felleca and Tommaso Giuliniseeing the partnership between again proposed, albeit in a different way Olbia and Cagliari. There is also another eventualitysomewhat unlikely, according to which Swiss Pro would retain ownership of Olbia, taking on the entire debt, finding the resources for it on its own ensure registration of the team in Serie D: at that point Felleca it would only deal with the sports management, limiting themselves to investing exclusively in that direction and staying out of any discussion related to the club’s debt exposure. In short, they will be days of fire regardless of the ending of the story.
“This sense of celebration that flies and goes // Above the whole city // In the long, very hot summer”. So 883 sang way back in 2001, but around Olbia the warm climate is anything but festive. With a future still to be written for the Olbia area, we expect a particularly hot June and not just from a meteorological point of view. At stake are the present and future of a club that in the last decade has been able to rediscover professionalism and maintain it, through ups and downs, until losing it again at the end of a schizophrenic season from all points of view. Will Felleca really be the savior of the homeland? Who knows, the horizon is still very uncertain and nebulous, but something more will be understood in the next few days. It’ll just take a little more patiencea word recently very fashionable in the shadow of Tavolara.
Francesco Aresu – Roberto Pinna
