He was mostly ignorant imo, not that smart. He wasn’t good with finances, he admitted to it.
Plusvalenza model to balance books was started by Marotta in 2016/17, and it wasn’t checked until Juve hired and actual qualified (CFA) person around 2020.
Plusvalenza over the years-
2016/17: 151m
2017/18: 102m
2018/19: 157m
2019/20: 172m
2020/21: 43m
That model literally was pushing financial problems into the future with amortization expenses. Whoever comes after you will look bad. Paratici either thought that was the smart way to do, if he thought of his previous boss as smart, or he knowingly didn’t want to look bad and continued with that unsustainable model.
It was unsustainable, so either the owners put in money, which they did, or cut on spending in later years(which is now). Not illegal which is what Cherubini thought. From what I seen they are referring to his thoughts as confessions/ black book.
plusvalenza itself isn't unsustainable, unless the sale comes with an expensive purchase too. in other words, big money swaps/purchases are unsustainable for a club like juve. straight sales were instrumental for the sustainability before tici started to practice his stupid swaps. before 2018/19 (ronaldo year, the start of tici's reign of financial terror), we made the del fabro - romagna swap with cagliari, and that's all. marotta wasn't without blame (too expensive signings include higuain, costa and berna), still, the plusvalenza wasn't a tool for survival and pushing expenses into the future.
listing plusvalenza alone won't show the full picture. check amortization too for the same periods. the change is incredible, and ronaldo was only part of the issue. cancelo, bonucciback, arthur, de ligt, kulu, danilo, romero, pellegrini, morata, demiral, rovella, mckennie were all +20m signings, and i'm sure i'm missing a few. also the overly inflated wage bill started with ronaldo, after that, everybody thought that he deserved 5m+ just to train alongside the goat.
also, the plusvalenza policy started with marotta. he sold 1 or 2 players with minimal minusvalenza before 2018. after that, the chaos started, and we became completely unpredictable on the market. romero is my favorite example: bought for >30m, amortized for a few years, never played a single match, sold for a massive minusvalenza by tici around 18m, just to be bought by the same tici for ~50m the next season. what the actual fuck.