Inter President Erick Thohir did an interview with the BBC and covered a range of topics. Here are his words:
What’s your first year in Italy been like? What were your feelings when you took over Inter? “Since the 1990s I’ve always been a fan of Inter and Serie A. When the Inter opportunity came up it was almost unimmaginable. Inter are a big club who have won lots of trophies and now want to get back to winning again. But for that to happen you need to find a balance between the sports and the business. If you look back and think that Bale was bought for close to 100 million. That’s impossible now. Italy used to be the number one league, but it’s not anymore. We need to do something and Inter need to do something to compete. But of course it’s not easy when you bring something new to Italy. You also need to try to understand the culture there. The last three or four months were important to help me understand Italian culture and passion and the people there. But at the same time we want to move on with the agenda we have because our target is to get back to being one of the top ten clubs in the world.”
Do you mean top ten in terms of businesses or top ten in terms of winning matches? “If we have a good business model, we can build a good team. It’s a challenge for us to get back to the top. In Italy we need to be back among the top three.”
Let’s talk about Carlo Tavecchio, a controversial character who has been punished by UEFA for his comments. Did Inter vote for him? “I respect what UEFA do but yes, Inter and other clubs in Serie A voted for him. There has been lots of discussion about Italy having to rebuild and when you have to do that sometimes nationalism can be very important. It’s strange for me as a foreigner to say that but I understand it, because many countries in the world when they want to do something better for the country they talk about nationalism. Take the Italian national team: I think calling Antonio Conte as coach was a great decision. There’s also an issue about the fact that Italian players need to play in Serie A because it’s important for the national team. There are similar discussions in England. They say ‘Why don’t we reduce the number of foreigners playing in the Premier League?’ Whether Tavecchio is the right person to change Italian football is something we’ll only know further down the line. It’s the same thing in politics: when you choose a president there’s no guarantee. We’ll see.”
But you think he is the right person? “It’s not so much about the person but the agenda proposed. For example, he proposed that Serie A should have 18 teams, not 20. We share that view. For me it comes down to having trust in the agenda and the strategy.”
Source: Inter.it
18 clubs?? Hell no! That won’t help Serie A at all, it just means less players getting top level experience.
Kristijan, I admire your passion for the team. Forza Inter!! However, the president of the club needs to be smart and carefull about everything he says. You cannot expect him to criticize Tavecchio on TV. If that happens the whole country would be against this “Foreigner who doesn’t know anything about italy and bla bla bla….”, plus we would not get another penalty in the next 10 years :). ET is a diplomat like every good businessman. About building the team financially first. That is the right approach. Ask Moratti, despite all the success we had, nobody showed interest in buying the team. That tells you the team was just pretty on the outside but was unsustainable. We could have ended in Serie B or Bankrupt. I too would like to see Moratti at every game, but I guess that is not up to us, but up to the new Owner.
I understand being calculated in speaking publicly mate, but some things aren’t there to make compromises with – institutionalized racism is one of them. I can’t even say Tavecchio is a racist for sure – he might not believe it privately – but that was a racist remark and he had to be warned for it.
If Juve and Roma could afford speaking out against him (and they haven’t suffered, nor will they, especially Juve), then surely we could as well. We were in the middle of a “say no to discrimination” campaign at the time. So we’re all about equality as far as our poster boys are concerned, but when it really matters – we keep our mouths shut.
As for the finance-football debate, like I mentioned above, I’m well aware we need both things simultaneously for the club to work long-term. But it’s about rhetoric. Thohir stayed quiet – that makes me think of Arsenal, quite frankly. They’re all about being profitable – but they are shit when it comes to football. On the other hand you have Chelsea – they make money by the tons, but they are strong football-wise. It’s much too early to make comparisons with the top, but I think you get my point.
As for Moratti, I have kind of a hunch (it’s just that, nothing more) that he’ll be back for his club one day. Inter has always been in their family, and he came back to take over what his father left to others when he felt it was time to put an end. The Moratti family could be back one day, I see Saras growing steadily on the market, and Angelomario is always there if Massimo thinks it’s too late. Thohir could even be a passing thing, a guy to help conquer the Asian market, to reform the club (because we really are in a rut), get rid of excess people like Branca etc. Ultimately, Moratti is Inter and Inter is Moratti, though. It will take a couple of numbers to change that, quite a lot of time and a lot of trophies 🙂
Inter is bigger than onevman….has been and always will be. Massimo Morratti was gracious enough to realize that and pass the baton, hope us fans can realize that too
Of course it is, and yes Moratti was noble enough to do what he did – but since we’re taking things literally – what I said was a figure of speech to describe the emotional wealth that the relationship between that family and the club has produced, as well as the incredible effort they’ve put into making Inter one of the most elite names in football history.
Inter is bigger than one man, but a HUGE amount of their success comes down to what that family fed the club. That was ultimately my point.
Err I like Thohir less and less as far as the public persona element goes in being a president. I liked his decisiveness when the Guarin/Vucinic drama was on last season, I like the fact that he’s ready to intervene when something wrong is being done – but this is a disgrace.
First they vote for a guy who gives racist remarks, at a time when most other big Italian clubs react, then nationalism is okay because “they have to rebuild”. Finally, that 2nd question is bugging me. I’d have loved to read an answer that goes “we want to be top 10 in football, we will feed the business off the successes in football. Of course, we need good business to get to the top 10 in football terms, but we’re here for football”. All this on top of those rumors (albeit they are just that so far – rumors) that he’s been telling Mazzarri that certain players “have to play because they’re good business for Asia”.
I can’t say he’s a bad businessman (he’s probably a good one, since he’s made a shitload of money), I can’t say what he’s doing to make the club financially sound again is wrong (that we’ll judge in a matter of years, not now), but I really see a lot of things I don’t like about him as far as the personality he transfers to the club in public.
I wish Moratti stayed on as the formal president of the club. I wish people were able to identify Inter with his face, sitting in the stands every single game, chain-smoking like he always did. Proper gentleman, one of the most charismatic presidents ever to grace a football club, despite his flaws as far as doing business went. He left no one indifferent. Seeing this from Thohir, though, I’m not surprised they aren’t too close, I’d run from this too.
1) We wonted for a man who has a lot of good ideas my friend; making the league smaller in terms of teams is fine and will make the “product” Italian football easier to sell, and his idea about letting the youth teams play in the lover ranks, like in i Spain, is also great! And let’s face it; there really ARE too many foreigners in Italy and many of them do nothing but sitting on the bench. I’m old enough to remember the rule about each team only playing with 3 foreigners at the same time and the rest was Italians! I know with the EU’s laws that won’t happen again, but we need to protect the Italian talents from leaving the country – look at England; yes, they’ve got the strongest league in the world but how many british players do they have in there (top)teams?? And how does that effect the national team??
2) With no money money you can’t buy your self succes – this was what “the old fool” Moratti thought! What you need to do, is what the Germans have done; getting strong financially first and THEN putting a strong team together using homegrown players and some well bought top players from abroad!
Thohir knows how to clean up the mess Moratti left us with and we should all be passient and support the team and the dicisions made by the club (know that Moratti and Branca are gone).
FORZA INTER AND FORZA THOHIR!
I think You pretty much misunderstood what I had to say…
1. I don’t really dig the entire point of having 18 teams instead of 20. Spain has 20, England has 20… (really, do explain this to me – what do we get except fewer fixtures compared to other leagues?) The only other effects I can think of are less players getting game time in the top tier, less money being made off top tier games… I don’t think England and Spain were stupid to make 20-team leagues. An 18-team formula might be better suiting for Italy, but I wonder if you can explain why.
2. I didn’t say Thohir’s business plans are bad. Neither did I say they were good, and you cannot say either, because I don’t imagine you’re a businessman yourself and know enough about these things to be able to judge after less than a year. Yes, interesting things have happened in terms of marketing, but we simply don’t know yet. You speak as if Thohir is the only businessman ever to have run this club – Moratti was a businessman too, that didn’t make him the best of owners.
What I mind is his rhetoric – the fact that he chooses not to present football success as a top priority. His words count, he’s the president of a club, the first person to publicly represent us, he’s the image of our club.
And no, it’s not simply “you get money, then make a good team”. You need a good team to make money – what does he have to market if his team doesn’t achieve success? Good-looking players and shirts? Money, brands, they’re made out of quality – in the case of football that translates into success via results. They’re interdependent.
And I really don’t see how you don’t mind us not commenting against Tavecchio when even Juve and Roma did so. Inter is a team that bears internationalism in its DNA, its genesis (and its name, not to mention). We had a fucking “Say no to racism” campaign going on during those days and we did this! That’s hypocrisy.
One more thing, I did not mention Moratti as the ideal man to create policies for a football club, I’ll be the first one to mention that his incompetency as an owner is one of the biggest reasons Inter has gone down, all the balloons were in his hands after all. But never, never confuse that with him creating a bad image for this club. The man is charisma personified and has never been controversial in any sense. He loved this club more than any of us do and always made sure that the character the club had from the days of his father and before that remained untouched. Thohir seems rather willing to sacrifice that. This debate is not about finance and results, that’s a different talk altogether. It’s about image and rhetoric.
Staying quiet in the eyes of racism at the very summit of the league is pretty high up the list of things that ruin image. Silently supporting it is one spot higher.
1. 18 clubs means a better product to sell – as I said above, because the television companies do not need to pay for the rights of showing games like Cagliari vs Sassuolo or what ever. What people wants to watch are the big teams, and with 18 teams the league could press the price a bit !
2. Moratti was a businessman yes, but did NOTHING to run the club as a business! Thohir is trying to do so!
3 About Tevecchio he has some fine ideas about protecting the league, developing the youngsters (which the English couldn’t care more about BTW) and making Italian football great again – the clubs, but MOSTLY the national team!