Why Fiorentina’s billionaire owner is glad the European Super League failed by skleb1234
, for an undisclosed sum, the Italian soccer club Fiorentina from brothers Andrea and Diego Della Valle, who had acquired the team in 2002 when it was on the verge of bankruptcy. Commisso, who was born in Italy and immigrated to the United States at age 12, says heplaying soccer with a ball made of rags and has remained an avid fan of the sport. “It’s been my passion my whole life.”
Commisso calls the closed-format of the Super League “arrogant, self-serving and elitist,” as it would have ruled out the possibility of underdog teams being able to participate. “Smaller teams need to have the chance to dream,” he says. What’s more, he adds, the competition would only have enriched the sport’s biggest teams and their owners, many of whom are fellow billionaires.
One of the biggest mistakes the 12 Super League teams made, Commisso says, was the lack of transparency: “Why didn’t they at least ask for the opinion of their fans?” As far as he knows, the Super League’s founding clubs didn’t speak to other teams before the competition was announced. “Fiorentina was certainly never contacted,” he says. “It was all done in secret.”Since January 2017, Commisso has also been majority owner of the historic New York Cosmos soccer team.