Lazio sporting director Igli Tare has given an insightful but scathing judgement of the current affairs in football. The Biancocelesti executive believes the health of modern football is corrupted with the injection of big money, citing it as the main reason way the beautiful game is gradually losing its shine.
Speaking exclusively at a conference (via LazioNews24) at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome, the longstanding director made some interesting statements.
“We are driving a Ferrari but sooner or later it will crash. In football, useless competitions are invented such as the Conference League, which I call the losers’ competition, or the Europa League, which have no value for the income they produce. We invent more competitions, even the Nations League with national teams and players who become robots. We play every two and a half days now and the players are unable to recover. All this is not human. To generate more revenue, we generate more problems. Football has taken the wrong path.”
He went on to give his opinion on the model of multi-club ownership in football.
“Multi-club ownership has not only been implemented in Italy, but there are now many funds worldwide, which have acquired many clubs in this country. They own up to six, seven different clubs in different countries. It’s not a bad thing, but it must have an ulterior motive that is useful for the company. It depends on what the purpose is. If you own a club that has ambition to go to the football that counts, for example Serie A, in the long run it becomes a problem. For example, De Laurentiis in Bari will be forced to sell maybe in seven months. So, I insist on second teams. It is no coincidence that more than six years ago we had a meeting to change ideas and I was able to tell my experience in this regard.”
To end his insightful affirmations, Tare took a jab at some of the Serie A hierarchy that he claims have lost touch with their roots and are being kept ‘alive’ by the system.
“By now, there are four owners remaining: Udinese, Atalanta, Lazio and Napoli. I’m more for this management, since multinationals have only commercial interests and the beauty of football is lost, the passion, the love. Those funds work with algorithms and no longer want to know about the history of the team and the city. I am old school that way.
What is missing from football? Corporate executives, due to the fact that the duration of the contracts varies too much. Take me, I am one of the oldest managers in Serie A, this is my 15th year at Lazio. I am fortunate to work with a club with virtuous management. Today there are clubs, even in the first tier, such as Juve, Rome, Milan, Inter, which technically have gone bankrupt, but are kept alive by the fact that the system needs them.”
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