Who is Giovanni Sartori, Sports Director of Bologna of Miracles and King of capital gains. His best blows and record sales with Chievo, Atalanta and Felsinei di Saputo (who has held him back)
Behind a great team there is always an excellent sports director. Behind the miracle of Bologna who in two years has returned to breathe the Champions League football and then to conquer the Italian Cuphalf a century and over the last time, There is the competent and profound work of Giovanni Sartori. Former medium -level footballer, a career spent between Serie B and Serie A with the peak in Milan, where he had grown up by driving the youth of youth, and now authentic king Mida of Italian football.
There is him behind the Boom of Bologna of Joey Saputothe architect of the successes of the field and that championship of the budget finally in surplus after ten years of investments to lose. The patron had put many money from 2014 to 2024: 248 million euros of passive passives with almost 290 of payments and loans. Then the turning point. On 30 June the first account in profit thanks to the revenues of the Champions League and the numbers of the player trading. The stage of Giovanni Sartori.
Who is Giovanni Sartori, sports director of Bologna
Originally from Lodi, born in 1957, Giovanni Sartori began his career as a sports director in 1992 at Chievo, a club with which he had lived the last months as a professional footballer at the end of a career embellished by the Scudetto of the star conquered with Milan in 1979.
Just at Chievo he began to feed his fame as a competent and attentive manager. In the early 2000s he was his signature behind the happy parable of the Flying musica team of a neighborhood that reaches the threshold of the Champions League and who lives seasons in Serie A well above the possibilities granted by the catchment area of a reality also crushed by the co -presence of Hellas Verona.
Then another eight years at Atalanta, from 2014 to 2022, in the first phase of the explosion of the Bergamo club of which he is responsible for the technical area: qualifications in sequence to the Champions League and the Europa League, the quarterfinals lost at the last minute against PSG in 2020 and two Italian Cup finals without the joy of victory but with the awareness of having laid the foundations for a winning, sustainable and profitable sports project. Almost a unicum in an Italian football resigned to losing, first only in the accounts and then also on the field.
In 2022 the landing at Bologna di Saputo whose fortunes is making: the Felsinei entered the bourgeoisie of Serie A on a stable plan and did it without fear of marrying the policy of Saputo, giving in every summer valued players and become market assets and then reinvesting in talented young people to reconstruct the chain.
Giovanni Sartori, his record sales with Bologna
In two summers, Bologna has created collections for almost 160 million euros with only four market movementsplayers paid for a few months before about thirty millions. Dry capital gains, champions projects taken at the right time and then exploded to Dall’Ara and circulated with great economic satisfaction.
In 2024 the sale of Joshua Zirkzeeattacker taken two years earlier by Bayern Munich, investing 8.5 million and resold at Manchester United for 42.5. Money in part to be recognized by the Bavarians according to a scheme often used by Sartori to be able to bring talents to be built or relaunching to Bologna. The other example? Riccardo Calafiorirebuilt after injury and caught by Basel for 4 million to be sold to Arsenal 45 with a resale percentage in favor of the Swiss.
This year two other outgoing shots multiplying the investments made. The defender Sam Beukemaselected by Az Alkmaar and paid 8 million in 2023 and then get 31 two years later (Naples) and the left wing Dan Ndoyethe real masterpiece of the summer of Sartori: he too from Basel, 10 million euros in 2023 and then sent to Nottingham Forest in an operation that will allow Felsinei to pity no less than 40 more bonuses.
A system refined in years of career. At Atalanta, for example, Sartori signed some of the most important blows in his history as a sports director: Kulusevski (from 3 to 35 million euros), Kessié (from 1.5 to 32), Gosens (from 1 to 27), Cristante (from 9 to 30), Bastoni (sold for 31 to Inter) and Romero (from 17 to 50).
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