FENUCCI’S INTERVIEW ON RADIO LEGA SERIE A | OneFootball

This morning, Bologna’s CEO Claudio Fenucci appeared on the Radio Serie A programme ‘Goal Economy’ presented by Marco Bellinazzo.

This is a summary of his interview:

‘We arrived with Saputo when Bologna were in Serie B, we won the championship, and we consolidated our position in Serie A thanks to the investments made by the owners. We had some difficulties during one season, which were resolved with the arrival of Sinisa Mihajlovic, and we progressively improved, managing to qualify for the Champions League. This season, after a normal settling in period due to a new style of play, we have found a team chemistry that works thanks to the work of Vincenzo Italiano, the staff and the players. The victory against Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League has enhanced our progress. Playing in the top European competition has helped us to perform even better in the league. We are putting in high level and high intensity performances. We are satisfied, but we mustn’t stop. We are ambitious.

I started in 1995 as CEO of Lecce and I worked with an Italian ownership for 17 years – the Semeraro family, who loved Lecce and this sport. In the economic context of the football industry, that was naturally different from the current one. Those were the years following the launch of pay TV. I was with Jim Pallotta at Roma, then Saputo here in Bologna. Joey is very aware of the value of this sport in terms of the collective emotion it generates. He has always said that he is not the owner but the custodian of Bologna, which also belongs to the city and the fans. Saputo also has a club in the MLS in the United States and therefore has a deep-rooted vision of the sports business. His main concern today is how the Serie A league can grow further and overcome the difficult future challenges in an industry that is facing significant changes in some key sectors, such as the media and commercial world.

There is a direct impact with the income from the Champions League. It’s significant, but for ranking reasons, not at such a high level as Inter and AC Milan, for example. This allows us to improve the balance sheet and end the year with a profit. I won’t hide the importance of a second factor: European competition creates additional value on the squad members. For us, sporting competitiveness remains central but we have to consider how this growth is to be financed, including through some player transfers. There is a masterful club in this: Atalanta. A model that is difficult to replicate; beyond the competence of the Percassi family and the great work done by Gasperini, there are conditions linked to the work developed in the youth sector and the transfer market that have changed over time, also due to the economic situation of the system. However, we will try to work in this direction, trusting the work we do in the technical area and the network of scouts that we have built up in recent years.

I had known Giovanni Sartori for almost twenty-five years. I knew he would be the right person to take Bologna to the next level. In addition to the growth of the first team, we have made significant investments in the facilities, first and foremost the Sports Centre that we acquired and rebuilt. As I said, with Sartori and Di Vaio, we are also trying to improve the organisation of the Youth Sector to create talent that can also be useful to the First Team. In past years we haven’t been able to do this as much as we would have liked, but today we are very focused on this aspect and, if necessary, we will increase the investment budget in the youth sector. It will take a few years but we are on the right track.

Italian football needs to equip itself with new facilities. There is no single pilot project or model. Streamlining administrative procedures, perhaps with the intervention of a Commissioner, and finding financial resources could be common starting points. The ‘Dall’Ara’ project is a redevelopment and is a very complex process, with higher costs than building a new stadium. In 2019, we started with a supporting economic-financial plan but it was disrupted after Covid and we saw construction costs rise, as in the whole real estate sector, significantly reducing the return on investment. Initially the costs were around 130 million euros, today they are 220.40 million. Of these, 130 million are provided by the Municipality of Bologna with whom there is a positive collaboration, the rest is partly debt and partly financed by Saputo with the absolute necessity of a public contribution on which Minister Abodi is working. We are waiting for signals from the Government, thinking that an innovative way can be found to combine public capital with private capital, as has happened for many operations carried out on stadiums in Europe. We should build a temporary stadium when the Dall’Ara is temporarily closed for works. The Dall’Ara is not only an asset for Bologna, but for Italian football. When it was built, it was a model for many other stadiums in Italy and Europe. Only by upgrading the facilities can we create the fans of tomorrow for Italian football. The bond between club and fan is born inside the stadium: facilities suitable for the new generations are necessary.’