Corriere dello Sport: ‘The Serie A that Americans love’

Today’s edition of “Il Corriere dello Sport” focuses on the Americans in Serie A.

Bergamo, Texas? The news that another American mogul was on the cusp of Italian football gave the League a new shocker: for hours the name of George Rosenberg Roberts, the financier of Houston, the same city as the new owner of Roma Dunn, was the trader Friedkin who approached his passion for playing. on multiple tables. The investment group that Roberts founded in 1976, KKR, was mentioned in negotiations to buy Atalanta, before being turned down.

According to Sky Sport Italia, there was talk of acquiring 85 percent of the club’s shares, worth 350 million euros, and then fermented like Panettone for half a billion because a large part of the Percassi group would also be up for sale. . , which ranges from logistics to cosmetics. KKR, through a Radiocor spokesperson, denied the deal, but according to other sources it could only be part of the story. And so all attention was focused on Roberts, 77, the law degree holder, the man who led the US fund to own global stocks, from China to the UK, ranging from oil to aircraft, with a portfolio of a hundred corporate securities that, together, generate revenues of $244 billion. dollars, making KKR one of the five largest investment companies in the world. The character, according to Forbes magazine, is credited with a personal fortune of eight billion dollars, and she lives in California. He and his colleagues were inspired by an investigative book, Barbarians at the Gate, which chronicles the acquisition of RJR Nabisco, in 1988, with capital entirely made up of bank loans.

Rumors about Atalanta, despite the denials, confirm the existence of a trend: Italian football is still very popular in America. Three years ago, quoting a Wall Street broker’s words, Corriere dello Sport-Stadio wrote that “all Serie A clubs, except Juventus, are for sale,” he had only sketched out the current scenario. Even those with solid and determined survival real estate, such as Inter, Naples, Lazio and Fiorentina, continue to be followed with interest by powerful financial groups, particularly in New York, Texas and Connecticut. Milan, Florence, Naples, and Rome are brand cities that Americans love so much, but the emotional question – as anyone who hangs out in the financial world knows – is zero: every American investor is looking for certain dollars and returns. And Italian football is considered “attractive”: a glorious past, a modest present, lower costs compared to Premier League clubs and less stringent restrictions than the Bundesliga. Capital gains from nurseries are crazy, same line drawn by American Mls properties: they are looking for youngsters in American or South American academies, hoping to resell them in Europe for their gold weight. Italian football remains the land of capital gains and football schools. That’s why, while Bergamo waits to see if the American track, with Roberts or others, will materialize, no one, except for Juventus, can know what the future holds.