The failure to qualify for the Champions League, the hole in the budget that Exor will close and the farewell or downsizing of the manager wanted a year ago by Elkann. Which continues to burn sports managers and projects…
In the end, Damien Comolli pays the bill for Juventus’ sporting failure, one year after John Elkann’s call to Juventus’ bedside and six months after his investiture as CEO. Quick and not painless parable for the French manager, whatever the Exor owner’s decisions may be once the championship is over. The mood at Continassa is easy to interpret: Comolli is on edge while Spalletti is considered the present and the future.
It wouldn’t even be surprising if it weren’t for the fact that the plenipotentiary wanted by Exor and now at least downsized is the third CEO of Juventus in the last five years. And it will probably be followed in the short or medium term by the fifth. A list starting from Maurizio Arrivabenesent to try to control out-of-control accounts and is enriched by the figure of Maurizio Scanavinoin the dramatic moment of the investigation into the Juventus budgets, to get to Comolli. And before Arrivabene there had been space for the turning point of the forty-year-olds decided by Andrea Agnelli which had swept the duo’s experience Marotta-Mazzia on which the winning and virtuous cycle of the nine championships and the sustainable income statement had been built.
Juventus, the continuous condemnation to start again from Year Zero
Revolving doors that cannot help but convey a sense of perpetual precariousness, with the Juventus company continually condemned to live its Year Zero. An eternal return to the starting point which also involves the intermediate figures of the club such as sporting directors (4) and coaches (Spalletti is number 6). It is physiological that it happens when the failure involves all areas of the club, forcing the owners to continuously intervene to fill the holes, but it is also a sign of enormous weakness that delays the moment of returning to full competitiveness.
Failure to qualify for the Champions League will be a tsunami with immediate and medium-term effects. With all the accounts in hand, this means that revenues of no less than 60 million euros have been wasted, even if the correct estimate is closer to 100. For a club struggling with a long and tiring process of recovery and rebalancing its accounts, it is a very hard blow. Whoever is in command of the operations, next summer it will be necessary to make some sacrifices on the market and not all the objectives that Spalletti had outlined in the weeks in which the Europe that counts seemed within reach, often high profile names and heavy salaries, will be achievable.
Juventus, the entire sports team needs to be rebuilt
In short, the plan to return to winning and at the same time generating profits is no longer current and will have to be rewritten. Elkann will almost certainly have to proceed with a new capital increase, but what will affect the rebirth process even more is that Comolli’s exit (or downsizing) will call into question the entire apparatus that the French manager has built over the winter. Translated: the very structure of Juventus refers to Comolli, from the sporting director (Ottolini), to the technical director (Modesto) to the managers who deal with marketing and measuring the team’s performance. Redrawing the balance, if Comolli pays the bill, will not be quick or painless.
Here’s why the crossroads at which John Elkann finds himself is difficult to interpret and also extremely dangerous. It is impossible to imagine that things could go as they did last season: Spalletti has made it clear that he does not share Comolli’s vision of football, which is reciprocated by the Frenchman, and has established direct contact with the owners. The contract renewal in April, without certainty of achieving the objective, was the signal of the new centrality of the coach who, however, is now a leader crippled by having put his signature on the sporting failure.
Only he had the courage to define his Juventus season as “great”. Numbers and results deny this and it is a further problem because starting from a leader with whom there is no agreement on the reading of the past is a fragile basis for building the future. All in a context in which Elkann has demonstrated for years that he has been on the hunt for the right man to whom he can entrust Juventus for whom, beyond a few sporadic incursions and enormous financial support, he does not intend to put his face forward.. His problem and that of millions of fans is that the research so far has been a failure and is burning a treasure of money, hopes and passion.
