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10 years of FIF
Nostradamus
Most Passionate Member
What I don't understand is how a country like Italy can lose a brand like FC Internationale.
is Italy that poor? are their no Italian companies, funds, entities you name it who are interested in the ownership of inter? that's weird. because all the top clubs in Europe are still owned by their countries except for Milan and Inter.
and by topclubs I dont inlude psg , and Mancity.
That's actually a bad comparison.
Which top clubs are you referring to?
Liverpool is owned by US Americans.
Manchester United is owned by US Americans,
Arsenal, if you care to include them (I would not), is owned by Americans and some former Soviet guy (Uzbek or something)
Real Madrid and Barcelona are not companies, so they have no shareholders. Their structure resembles that of a trust fund rather than a company. They are also owned by the fans.
Atletico Madrid on the other hand had Chinese investors.
Bayern is owned by the fans. As almost all German clubs, so an individual or a company can only have a minority shareholding position, unless there's a special permission for this (granted only for Leverkusen, Wolfsburg, Hoffenheim and RB Leipzig iirc)
Benfica and Porto are similarly structured to the German model, but Benfica is also listed on the stock exchange. The members still get to elect the management, as iirc they control roughly 60% of the company. Benfica is actually a big mess that deserves its own thread but let's not get there. Porto is also listed in the stock exchange, where I think 75% of the shares are owned by the fans.
By "fans", we mean a non-profit entity that has membership and they all have equal rights. That's the setup in Spain, Portugal and Germany with the football clubs, even if they have limited companies operating the football clubs in many cases. In Greece, we have this but there is a cap of 10% per "professional" sports club that is reserved for the mother entity, which is the non-profit organization. It can be more, but no less than 10% of the ownership. They barely get one seat at the board.
Milan is owned by a US fund.
Inter is owned by the Chinese.
Let's not talk about English clubs where 90% of them in the first three tiers of football are owned by foreigners.
In Italy actually it's not so bad. You have American-Italians sometimes (Roma, Fiorentina, Bologna, Venezia etc) but most of the teams are still owned by Italians or people who are Italian domiciled. Juventus, Napoli, Lazio, Sampdoria, Genoa, Torino all are owned by Italians.
The only clubs with foreign ownership with zero ties to Italy are Milan and us.
Italy actually was the first place to resist this and they all ended up in England. Abramovich had tried to buy Fiorentina (but they wouldn't return them to Serie A), he then tried to buy Parma but they refused to sell to a Russian and after failing to buy Manchester United he settled for Chelsea. Parma did not want to be associated with what they considered 'dirty money'. Ironically, both great sides of the 90s believed it'd be better to fold than end up being a Russian tycoon's plaything!