Speaking to CCTV News, Erick Thohir spoke further on the SCG takeover: “We considered various options but finally we decided to sell to Suning. Zhang seemed to be the ideal partner, the one with whom we shared similar ideas. Now Inter can rely on a solid administartion, prepared and knowledgeable. Sport and financial results will confirm our decision. We managed to improve our league table moving from eight to fourth and we increased our annual income from 164 million to 186 million Euro. With the Europa League, we will manage to make more than 200 million.”
Thohir detailed what fans can expect from the partnership too: “The fundamental aspect is to share a project with someone who has the same ambitions. Inter is one of the top ten brands in football, yet managed only 17th place worldwide for income. TV rights money are not enough, there is the real need to change how things work in Italy, starting from kick off times, especially for the games which are shown on television. 20.45 kick off is not ideal and we lost a lot of viewer from Asia for this reason. I took this job and will keep going on: this is what I intend to give to my partners, to have faith in the current management. And I repeat: now there is everything in place to compete once again with the big clubs, to reach the objectives we set a couple of years ago.”
Source: CCTV News