Fiorentina president Rocco Benito Commisso has praised a handful of Italian clubs, while taking a dig at two of the country’s most followed. The Italian-American, who is the founder and CEO of Mediacom – the fifth largest cable television company in the USA – owns New York Cosmos, along with La Viola.
Speaking on 90esimo Minuto, a show on Rai 2, the executive shed light on his journey of buying the Florence-based club which was finalized in mid-2019.
It was previously thought that Commisso invested around €200m to purchase Fiorentina but now he has revealed the exact amount he parted with.
“I spent €170m on buying Fiorentina, adding €80m to cover the losses of the previous two years and about €87m to build the Viola Park, so it makes €350m. I could not make a similar investment in other times, but I am not like other Americans. I was born in Italy and I came back to give back to the country and football what I received,” the 71-year-old said.
He wishes to imitate what owners of three clubs have done so far – Napoli’s Aurelio De Laurentiis, Atalanta’s Antonio Percassi and Lazio’s Claudio Lotito.
He said: “I think that Lotito, De Laurentiis and Percassi have done an outstanding job, all three have bought the clubs with little money. Two were in bankruptcy or Serie B. I admire them and I hope Fiorentina can reach the same level.”
The business magnate also spoke about his intention to buy Milan from Yonghong Li before Elliott Management took over and took a jab at Juventus and Inter for disrespecting financial rules.
“I had the opportunity to buy Milan, then Mr Li did a stupid thing for which he lost €500m in a year and a half. Rules in football must be transparent. It is not possible that Fiorentina must be in line with the liquidity index every three or six months to bring money to Italy while clubs like Juventus or Inter don’t respect it, perhaps by delaying the payment of salaries. Why do I need to bring money and others don’t do the same? I know what you write in Italy, rules are not respected,” he ended.