Columnist and market man for Tuttomercatoweb, he is a speaker and radio commentator for Radio Sportiva. Market and rumors on Rai Sport
With all due respect to the American properties that crowd the desks of our football, the Red Bull model will never work here. Because it rhymes with planning, patience, even errors, mistakes, attempts, risks. In Italy, however, the ready-to-use, cooked-and-eaten model is the one that has always been the most popular. There may be exceptions, but when the pressure rises the margins of error are limited even in those cases. The drinks market comes back into fashion, as a model, every time US properties come back into play, which have made the Moneyball method and Ralf Ragnick’s equally revolutionary idea of scouting two cornerstones and design obsessions. And now that Jurgen Klopp, seen by the Americans as a guru and reference for their respective benches (did anyone say Milan?), has become the deus ex machina of the new RB sports group… Heavens open.
The geography of Red Bull and the absurd Italian ambition
Salzburg. Leipzig. New York. Bragança Paulista. Anif. These are the cities where the galaxy teams of Dietrich Mateschitz’s energetic company are based. And now that together with Mr LVMH, i.e. Bernard Arnault who is nothing less than the fourth richest man in the world, he can add Paris to the map… Think of Paris FC, which has no tradition and which has only been in Division 1 three times in the 1970s with very little glory. Almost pleasant places for football, where playing football is simpler because the square doesn’t press, because the press doesn’t force, because everything is lighter and then you can do business, marketing, scouting and even look for talents in the most remote corners of the world with an approved philosophy. How can you even think that this model can be replicated at San Siro, at the Olimpico, in Turin?
The virtuous ideas. And the models that work in Italy
The Red Bull one is an extraordinary example. But Klopp becoming Ralf Rangnick and sublimating that role is not something we could (should) see in Italy. Because each environment has its own specificities and the examples of recent football demonstrate that the winning models are different. Of course, even here, RB can bring some extraordinary ideas. Courage in scouting. In believing in young people. In gambling. In taking risks. But the models that work in our latitudes are very different. It is Cristiano Giuntoli’s ability to pull the threads of a project, capable of working in harmony with the coach and scouting with his working group. It is the ability of Giuseppe Marotta and Piero Ausilio in creating a highly experienced team, a solid framework, into which to then insert both technically and economically advantageous pieces (the examples of Mkhitaryan and Thuram fit perfectly) and of young people to grow up in the shadow of the big names. It is the work of Antonio Percassi and Tony D’Amico, who work on the track of a consolidated project made up of ideas and ambition, risks but also ever more certainties (because if the pressure increases, the margin for error narrows). In Rome the Red Bull model could not work, with all the pressure from the capital, which only Claudio Lotito has shown he can support over all these years. And then Maurizio Micheli’s scouting in Naples and the harmony with President Aurelio De Laurentiis (who is certainly not a Red Bull model). And so on, one after the other. Each bell tower with its chime, but far from an idea of football that in Italy could work (perhaps!) only in squares where the pressure is almost zero. But with her also ambition.