«Church thinks only of increases». And Elkann and Agnelli talk about Del Piero-Corriere.it

It had taken him a while
Maurice Arrivabene
to understand what was happening inside the Juve home: «I had called Cherubs (the ds,
ed
) telling him not to spend a lira more than what was budgeted”, he told the Turin prosecutors who are investigating the Juventus accounts on 29 November 2021. After all, Andrea Agnelli had also chosen him for this, such as: «I think he trusts me because he considers me honest. And just read the latest financial statements, there was certainly economic tension, not financial». An amusement park for the players, given the salaries, from the outburst of Federico Cherubini, in an interception with the manager of the finance area Stefano Bertola: «Our worst earns like Atalanta’s best. Zapata gets 1.8 million… if we bought a dog we gave him 3 and a half million».

Those were the times of the all-in for Europe: «One day Giaccherini told me: ‘You know I’m good at Juve, when we train it looks like a quarter-final of the Champions League’. Thanks to c., there were 24 of them… we had players off the list who cost 10 million gross». And for this he accuses his predecessor,
Fabio Paratici: “We were arrogant on the market, because the Fabio of 5 years earlier doesn’t take Higuain at 90, he takes Gabriel Jesus at 10, and makes him a 90”. After that, money is an unpredictable variable, with football players, as stated in an annotation by the Guardia di Finanza, referring to a phone call (with Agnelli) on 9 August 2021: «Cherubini affirms that that of Federico Chiesa it doesn’t seem like the profile of a player who can stay at Juve for many years, due to his entourage who are very much looking for substantial economic increases”.

Agnelli himself vents about shopping, always with the director: «If I put together, from 2010 when I arrived to today, the bullshit we did in the last three transfer market days, we threw 60-70 million down the toilet… I’ll tell you this, spannometric, from Anelka ». And Cherubini: «Bendtner, the return of Caceres for the third time». And then you have to deal with Allegri, reflected the director: «If once every 40 games he has to play, he will play one of the under 23s… Max before he plays one of the under 23s…». The negotiations set up comic dialogues, such as when Romero is about to leave Tottenham and Demiral at Atalanta: «Gasperini wants to meet Demiral – bursts Paratici – but I told him: where are we in the world? Because if he had to take someone in Mozambique what did Gasperini do? To know. Demiral has been in Italy for three years… are you kidding? These are out of this world.” And Cherubini: «Eh, that’s how they are».

Bertola instead discusses the choices of the president, who at a certain point launched the generation of forty-year-olds: «Andrea admits mistakes yes, in words, but then in deeds very little… that is, it’s not what he says, out of three I made three mistakes». Referring to the managers Re, Ricci and Paratici. On the subject – write the soldiers of the economic and financial police nucleus – he also complains Arrive well: «All the kids Andrea is in love with (employees, ed) have never lifted a finger in their entire life, these need to be sent into the field, if you don’t put them into the field they will always make great, beautiful things to read, but a little more difficult to make». Attempting to understand how things are going, the then CEO asks the chief financial officer at the time, Stephen Cerrato, to give him a report on the costs of the under 23 team: «The idea I got is that that one is a bandwagon that we have created… I’m telling you out of my teeth, that we created because we no longer knew where to put the players ». Pause: «Of Faith (Cherubini, ed) I don’t trust the under 23 at all, he has a very emotional approach».

But then, the ball is also hearts that beat and flags that wave, as emerges from a phone call on 6 September 2021 between Agnelli and John Elkann, CEO of Exormajority shareholder, summarized by the financiers: “They discuss how to bring Alessandro Del Piero closer to the company”.