It wasn’t a Saturday like many others, that ofInter. It won’t be a Sunday like the others, that of San Siro. It’s the day of the celebration for the Nerazzurri Meazza: at 6pm the team Simone Inzaghi, which will propose it again in its best possible version, will host Lazio. The party will start on the ninetieth anniversary, with the delivery of the Italian champions’ cup and the event that has been worked on for some time in Viale della Liberazione, with Tananai and Ligabue as protagonists, among others, for a grand farewell to the fans. Many: with today’s race, quotas will be exceeded 1.38 million of spectators in the nineteen home matches that accompanied Inter’s journey to conquer Serie A.
And tomorrow who knows. Better, the day after tomorrow. Saturday, it was said, was special, Pandora’s box opened. After days of silence, rather noisy, Steven Zhang broke it and came out into the open: the negotiation with the Pimco fund for a new loan has essentially collapsed, the Nerazzurri president hoped for a “peaceful resolution” of the affair linked to the loan received in 2021 from Oaktree. For his part, the latter makes it known that the “legal threats” are nothing more than the request to return the 275 million euros – plus interest, almost reaching 380 – in the terms and in the ways provided for by an agreement that is three years old and which, in the minds of those who signed it, had to be an injection of liquidity to achieve the sale of Inter.
The issue is far from closed: there will be hectic hours searching for that peaceful solution. But the latest moves by Oaktree, which for example has entrusted itself to Claudio Albanese, for years the point of reference for communications for Andrea Agnelli’s Juventus, refutes once and for all the idea that the Californians had little or no interest in bringing in the ‘Inter in your wallet. The roadmap is quite clear: if by Tuesday Zhang does not repay the amount owed, or does not obtain an extension – unlikely – then Oaktree will enforce the pledge. The horizon will become that of a further transfer to other interested parties (Saudis?), but in the meantime the club will still have to be managed. The process will not be quick, who knows if it will be painless, but here lies another theme of the story.
Although Inter cannot be considered completely unrelated to the financing, the latter is a deal between Suning and Oaktree. The club is a guarantee: for goodness sake, it always has its debts and its issues to settle (like everyone in Serie A and in Europe), but the possible change of hands would not particularly affect the accounts of the Viale della Liberazione club , which for the record have improved dramatically compared to 2021. So much so that Oaktree, rather than collecting 380 million euros, prefers to pay the difference compared to the market value that will be established by the appraisers. And then decide what to do.
There are essentially three scenarios. Inter remains Zhang’s, the least realistic hypothesis today. It ends up in the hands of Oaktree and they manage it, for a more or less long period, as Elliott did with Milan. Finally, it immediately passes into the hands of a third buyer, perhaps the most credible hypothesis but which still requires not very short technical times, both to close the highly probable complaints legal with Suning, both to determine the value of the club and to arrive at a further transfer. In all three eventualities, one fact remains: barring twists and turns, nothing would change the plans immediately. To name one: from Marotta on down – including Inzaghi – a rethinking of the sports area would be inexplicable. This is for reasons both of results achieved (Oaktree has had two directors on the Board of Directors for three years, you have seen how it has operated in this period) and of time, which as always runs away.
Today the party, tomorrow the opponents don’t wait and a transfer market to face begins. With what property? Probably not the Zhang family.