Fully agreed.
If we ever will actually become a top European club again, it's inevitable that Serie A will have to improve as a whole.
Right now we are among the top 2nd tier of Europe, with the likes of Atletico Madrid, Borussia Dortmund, Tottenham, maybe Arsenal, Porto, Benfica, Lyon.
1st tier is Madrid, Bayern, Barcelona, Man Utd (in terms of financial potential - what they lack is good decision makers atm).
Bottom 1st tier is new richies PSG, Chelsea, Man City.
And top 2nd tier will probably be our ceilling for a long time. However we have more potential than the 2nd tier clubs to ascend to the 1st tiers without a magnate, given our wonderful tradition in Italy, being the top club and most popular club of our country, with a bunch of some of best players all time being our legends..
But that's where we lie now. Anyway, we've seen 2nd Euro tier clubs like Dortmund and Atletico make amazing runs in Europe. It is possible for us if the board and sports director make an outstanding job with the resources we have. I mean, the quality of the work Dortmund and Atletico are doing is really really amazing.
Unfortunately, Marotta clearly doesn't look to be the one capable of doing this.
We have a huge upside though. With the right men making decisions, we can achieve the 1st tier again. But we need the best possible human resources in terms of scouting, football assessment, etc.
We simply won't reach the 1st tier financially speaking for the foreseeable future. The only way to compete with them is doing a world class job in terms of recruiting playeres, training, environment, coaching staff, scouting staff, etc. Marotta is clearly not the man to lead us to this place, even though he has his huge chunk of responsibility in bringing the club forward in the past 3 years.
But IMO he's already shown he won't be able to give the next step.
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My hope is that Agnelli doesn't get too attached to him and, with the increase in our revenues to happen in one year, that he finds another guy who can do a truly world class job at that position.
We should not hope that our revenues will continue to grow. I mean, from next year on, we may add 50M, which is a lot. But after that we will certainly stagnate. Our stadium and fan base in Turin don't give us many options. We already have a good TV deal. Our only hope is increasing revenue from merchandising.
The Juventus brand need to be more popular around the world. ADIDAS will probably help in this, since they have a big 5 clubs in the world for which they give special attention and try to expand the brand as much as possible. Flamengo is recently one of these, and they are executing a hell of a marketing plan for them.
So, we will basically rely on sportive performance in CL. That's basically it. The CL gained an enourmous proportion in the world. Here in Brazil people talk more about CL than the national league sometimes. It's on the open channels, non payed TV. There are Brazilians who support CL teams. They buy the EPL hype.
So we need an aggressive marketing from ADIDAS abroad AND keep competing in CL year after year, playing with the best and actually having a shot at reaching the final. We need this IN ORDER TO increase our revenues, it's not the contrary. So only with near perfect management we will reach this performance level.
This is not the 70s and 80s anymore. No company will give us money like Gianni used to do. Things are much more controled now, there are far more interests. In the past, the company belonged only to the Agnelli's. Gianni could actually do whatever he wanted with his money. Now the company belongs not only to the Agnellis, but to all shareholders. There are thousands of them. If they are unsatisfied, they will want to sell their stocks and the company's value will drop. Thus we can't expect to have a passionate godfather who will pump money in anymore, unless an oil arabic magnate buys us.
Thus my only hope is Andrea Agnelli. I still consider him to be a good willed, young, ambitious smart man who is passionate about Juve. We have to remember this before we weep about Elkann, who runs Exxor in a very good way, and in the most professional way. The guy simply can't do favours to Juventus, Exxor is not his company, it's the shareholders company.
If Andrea fails to see and perceive this, we are screwed. We can't continue to look to Italy. We have to compare ourselves to the biggest clubs in the world, the 1st tier. And then be humble and accept we are in the 2nd tier now, in terms of revenues and prestige. We have to look to clubs like Dortmund and Atletico and learn with what they do. We have to be ambitious.
We have to accept that we no longer stand in the prestigious position we've alwas stood till 10 years ago, throughout most of our history. We are not there anymore. We belong there, but to come back it will be a huge challenge and task, given the enourmous financial abysm between us and the top 8 clubs in the world. And this abysm will only be overcame with top world class quality management.