Fiorentina president Rocco Commisso once again hit out at the situation in Serie A: ‘Some teams have been helped to get ahead despite having broken the rules.’ Commisso was speaking (As quoted by Calcio e Finanza) at an event organised at the Auditorium CTO of the Careggi hospital in Florence and took the opportunity to address what he sees as ongoing problems with Italian football. The president was also asked about the criticism he has received in Florence over his ownership of La Viola and his plans to pursue a new stadium for Fiorentina in the near future:
“Here, there are the clever ones and some teams have been helped to get ahead despite having broken the rules. If there are rules, these must be respected. It is certainly not a good situation for Italian football. We will see what will happen. This problem is also reflected on the Italian national team: who would have expected us not to qualify for two consecutive World Cups? I repeat, when there are rules everyone has a responsibility to stay within those rules.”
“The situation in Florence? I don’t walk with any escort even though there is a lot of criticism. They are a minority, the one’s that makes the most noise. I put Fiorentina up for sale three years ago, until today no Florentine has come to me to buy it. So I remain the ‘stupid’ American who came here to invest. We bought Fiorentina for €165-170 million. Then with what we have invested in these years, we are up to €400 million. Revenues have not increased, especially with Covid. Italy is not growing. Instead, see how England, Spain and other countries are increasing their revenues, especially from television.”
“The new stadium? In Italy, hoping no one will be offended, there are too many monuments. All beautiful, but they also want to make the stadium a monument. Certain things have to be redone, it’s easy to understand. It’s not like today we’re using a Fiat 500 car from forty years ago. They wouldn’t let me build the stadium here. Too bad, it would have been finished today if they had let me start when I wanted. Now the municipality is thinking about it and it takes time. Maybe it will take five years.”
“If you go to a game at Yankee Stadium,” concluded Rocco Commisso, “with a family of four, the total cost will be about $1,000. We get €250,000 a year for twenty games from the curva. You understand the difference between us and other sports. AC Milan made €9 million from a Champions League match, we make around €8-9 million a year from ticket sales. You understand that we cannot compete in this way. I hope you understand what I’m saying.”
