«Juventus, legal actions against the club have led to the resignation of the board of directors, but we have no offense»- Corriere.it

No fault. But a media-judicial pressure that forced the Juventus board of directors to leave prematurely. The new president and the new CEO are on course to do well. But European football must change. These are in summary the words contained in the letter from the president of Stellantis, Ferrari e Exor CEO John Elkann to the shareholders of the investment company controlled by the Agnelli family.

Aldil of the 2022 financial statements explains Elkann: It was the legal actions against the club that ended up occupying the company’s board of directors, which met 18 times during the year. The level of pressure has grown to such an extent that the board has decided to resign to allow the company to defend itself most effectively against allegations ranging from alleged accounting irregularities to inaccurate disclosures to the financial markets mainly relating to player trading and salary agreements of the same. Juventus denies any wrongdoing. In the letter to the shareholders, the CEO of Exor recalls that to a greater extent than many of our companies, in 2022 Juventus found itself facing growing internal and external difficulties, which put the club to the test. Juventus made a significant loss of 239 million for the year and, for the first time since 2011, the men’s team has not won a title.

Juventus – continues Elkann – now has a new president, Gianluca Ferrero, and a new managing director, Maurizio Scanavino, who also heads our media company Gedi, where he is successfully carrying out a recovery plan. At Juventus, Gianluca and Maurizio will be aided by a new Board of Directors, and they have started well, ensuring that Juventus can meet its many current challenges, while protecting its reputation so that it can come back stronger both on and off the pitch. .

But according to the CEO of Exor this does not detract from the fact that European football must change (which was one of the reasons why the former Juventus president Andrea Agnelli had been one of the promoters of the Superlega): Continental European football is unable to keep keeping up with the growing financial power of the Premier League, whose revenues are expected to triple those of Serie A by the end of the current season. Football is still in the transition phase towards a fully professional industry: it still lacks clarity as a whole, and it is creating financial and regulatory tensions. Elkann then underlines the effects of the dominance of the Premier League. In the 2022 summer window, gross transfer spending in the Premier League equaled the total spending of Serie A, LaLiga, Bundesliga and Ligue 1 combined, and this situation continued into the winter window, with Chelsea alone spending more than combined sum of all clubs in these four leagues.