Awakening the Italian “bull”.

 

There is an old forgotten skill in investing, the alchemy of the good old boys, and it has many names.

Value-investing, stock-picking, turnaround plays, special situations.

What it really means is recognising a moment when a company with real inherent value is beaten-down, in a period of difficulty, under-capitalised. And hence, potentially, a bargain. By far the biggest returns are always grasped when an investor manages to buy well, at the right time, and for the right price. It’s the entry, not the exit, that delivers your ROI.

The asset in question of course must have something about it; something special.

It may be a great brand, amazing people and culture, fantastic product innovation (R&D), a strong moat, a loyal customer base. Good investors will see all that early, realise the serendipity of the timing, and put capital to work to nurse the patient back to health.

Steve Jobs returning to Apple is the obvious example. Nike today would be another candidate for such rehabilitation, and it applies even more in sports. The run-down storied franchise, the sleeping giant club, an Olympic sport that has never been set-up correctly. Perhaps even SportRadar.

 

Luca Brasi.

Italian football today sleeps with the fishes. It hasn’t been a protagonist at a World Cup for a full 20 years, and is at an all-time low.

What kind of tournament is it without Italy? Feeling very pissed off about this now.

Jim Kerr, Taormina, June 2026.

The club game is also on its knees, with the most storied brands (like Juventus and AC Milan) a shambles on and off the park.

Many have written well in recent months on the reasons for the decline. Ancient stadia, weak media market, old players rounding out their pensions crowding out local kids, ultra culture and violence, corrupt sporting directors on the take, crushing political interference. No money.

All true, but pragmatically that is just how we got here, and of little interest to the skilled investor on the hunt.

[We are where we are, and I just want to know now if I can buy cheaply on this slump, and fix the underlining issues. Because the asset is truly valuable, if run well.]

Today’s Albachiara Column assesses the possibility that Italian football is perhaps a “buy”.

Surprising?

Never forget, every “bear” is always just a “bull” waiting for the right moment.

 

The unique brand of Italian football.

We are in the middle of another World Cup without Italy, and for anyone over 35 that just doesn’t sit right. It’s like a documentary about the fashion industry excluding Armani, Valentino and Versace. Or a coffee table opus on the sports car not mentioning Ferrari, Lamborghini, Pagani, and Maserati.

The top end of our global game needs those classic kits, the tanned handsome faces, the national anthem, the Hollywood players.

In short, the beauty.

 

This asset is serious IP, with a very distinctive brand of perceiving how to play football. It definitely qualifies as “something special”, and not commodity.

Whilst folks like Gentile, Materazzi, and the gloriously-named assassin Romeo Benetti were masters in preventative destruction, the same sides were also full of talents like Rivera, Baggio, Totti, Pirlo, Del Piero.

We will stop them with whatever it takes, you do your thing up there and create something.

Ruthless, cynical, and yet at the same bursting with class and elegance: a perfect simile to the country itself, and its proprietary culture. Saint and sinner, Vatican and mafia, Chaos and art.

How could it be any different, being the grasslands of Caesar, Machiavelli, and Michelangelo?

They don’t make cuckoo clocks in Italy.

 

The way we were.

It has all been so very epic, like Old Hollywood, and surely worth a brief moment to remember what has been. Always find time to taste the honey.

In any proper history of football, Gli Azzurri are high up on the call-sheet. Their distinct school of football (traditionally catenaccio) has been central to the tapestry of the entire game, as Episode 2 of the Netflix Series “Becoming Champions” explains so beautifully.

Four titles, twice beaten finalists, and arguably the best team in the 1978, 1990, and 1998 editions. Homeric box-office rivalries involving especially Germany and Brazil. Always the team to beat, or more likely the rock upon which other favoured ships would run aground.

On the 5th of July, 1982, a Brazilian team, considered better than the 1970 outfit of Pele, ran aground in a game considered the masterpiece of its, or any, era. The clash of styles, the colours, the horns, a generation of young boys gasping for air after their desperate dash back from school to see it. The Paolo Rossi redemption arc rewarding the stubborn old father coach, Bearzot, who refused to throw him to the wolves. This rare ground-level footage transmits fully the high melodrama of what is better described as Verdi opera.

Italy has for sure always been leading-man material, but you also need worthy co-stars.

Greta Garbo and Monroe, Dietrich and Di Maggio, Marlon Brando, Jimmy Dean on the cover of a magazine. Grace Kelly, Harlow, Jean, picture of a beauty queen. Gene Kelly, Fred Astair, Ginger Rogers dance on air.

They had style, they had grace. Rita Hayworth gave good face.

Madonna Louise Ciccone, Vogue

Germany and Italy when they meet always give “good face”.

Like in 1970, when they delivered what is still called El Partido Del Siglo. They don’t make plaques for many games at the Azteca.

The history books show that Germany has always struggled to beat Italy, and that really stings their pride. Their relationship with Italians has been complicated, ever since Rome. Their superiority complex gets badly bruised when on the receiving end, whether in football, or seeing their women get seduced by the vitelloni on the beaches of Rimini each year.

On home soil in 2006, as massive favorites, in front of the Wall of Dortmund, they were again very very confident, especially as it was a stadium where the German national team had never ever lost. This would be delicious payback.

Alas no…

A simply colossal game in what would forever be known as the Summer of Fabio Grosso, with Italy’s own “they think it’s all over” moment.

Andiamo a Berlino, Beppe!

All of this is serious unique authentic “brand”, around something that really matters.

Isn’t that a product in which to invest? Especially if currently in a trough?

 

All Empires collapse.

My career in sports started in 1988 with a side-hustle to cover Serie A for UK newspapers and broadcasters. I lived the zenith of the Empire.

Since the win in 1982, and for a full 25 years after, this was La Scala of football, the league to which all aspired. Any club would do, just make sure you can say you played in Italy. The great Zico signed for Udinese, Socrates and Passarella joined Fiorentina, Platini and Boniek at Juventus, Falcao and Batistuta in Roma, the Dutch trio in Milan, Ronaldo Il Fenomeno at Inter.

Serie A was top dog, also internationally. It exploded in the UK on Channel 4 in the early 90s and left an indelible mark on all fans of that generation.

But it was all about to be thrown away, in complacency, arrogance, and internal jealousies, much like the old Roman Empire itself. Not this time by the sword of the German Hun, but rather the sweet seduction of English TV wedge. The industry of football had moved on, principally on the back of the commercial dynamism in the new Premier league in 1992, and the writing was on all walls in Italy.

Era finito!

It took a few years, but Italian football could just no longer splash the pot on players, recognising a structural competitive disadvantage that has worsened every year since. Losses had to be refinanced and clubs needed to be sold, with the new barbarians at the gate now mostly American. The great Italian family dynasties of Agnelli, Berlusconi, Moratti, Sensi were replaced by US hedge funds and celebrity investors like Cardinale and Friedkin. Many would say the exact same Visigoths and Vandals as before, just by another name.

They have all messed up.

 

The naivety of the nouveau riches.

American owners, who now own more than half of Serie A, all have some kind of investment thesis that would claim to be “value investing”:

*
Great Brands

**
Iconic Cities

***
Passionate fans

****
An easy uplift with a stadium real estate play

*****
New revenues from American marketing and commercialisation skills

******
Ever-growing media rights, both domestically and from the global Italian diaspora.

All this at “cheap” entry valuations compared to the going rate of comparable US sports franchises.

That is what has been plastered at the front of the various investment memoranda, and sold to the reckless and vain. How could you lose?

Have we seen any new stadia in Rome, Milan, Florence, Venice, Bologna, Parma?

Have we seen any material improvement in the match day, hospitality, sponsorship, revenues lines since the Americans kindly shared their superior marketing playbook?

Have we seen Serie A media values going up?

Does paying $1.2bn for AC Milan still seem cheap?

It needs to be said, American investment into Serie A has been a failure, as most general M&A towards Italy usually is.

This is important in itself. It is just too quirky a market for corporate playbooks to handle. To quote Gemini:

Italy is a complex, high-friction environment for foreign corporate ownership. Several historical and ongoing issues prevent cross-border M&A from being a success:

*
The Mid-Market Ceiling
Many of Italy’s top-performing companies are family-run SMEs. Foreign buyers frequently struggle with the “founder’s trap” – succession issues, resistance to institutional governance, and a cultural reluctance to fully cede operational control to international management.

**
Bureaucratic and Legal Drag
The slow pace of the Italian civil justice system and complex local regulatory frameworks, historically prolong transaction timelines and increase post-merger integration costs.

***
Productivity Disconnect
While acquired firms often see capital injections, Italy’s broader Total Factor Productivity (TFP) has faced a multi-decade stagnation compared to Northern Europe. Foreign buyers must work harder at the micro-level to drive efficiency gains against macro headwinds.

With that general context, just as well football is an easy sector to manage 😳!

Any Pollyanna investor, a Pallotta, a Cardinale, a Thohir, will get “educated” by the locals within 10 minutes of arriving, like the random tourist looking for a boat trip from Naples to Capri. Principally because they don’t pull focus on the one thing that really matters.

Players that make you win football matches.

In another business, this would be called research and development (R&D), but here it is described as talent sourcing and player trading.

 

Most of what one does in football is irrelevant.

We hear much noise these days, in conferences, podcasts and Masters courses, about building a sports organisation. Mainly around revenue generation and expanding a brand to new fans. It’s all worthy but so so marginal to what really matters. The real due diligence needs to be done elsewhere.

In Europe, where there is no free player R&D draft system, the entire success of your business is in managing the playing side. Growing and/or buying good players cheaply; and ultimately selling them with the right timing. All under a hard ethos of how you want to play football. Ray Ranson, a man with such direct experience in the dressing room and the boardroom, explained this so well on The Confessional:

Anything else doesn’t touch the sides.

Let’s be very very blunt here, hoping not to discourage all those young kids wanting to get into the business side of sport. No matter how good a front-of-shirt deal you do, how you maximise ticketing yield, how you engage fans in fucking Indonesia, it’s all just peanuts compared to the money you lose hiring the wrong coaches and buying the wrong players. Forget the direct money you dissipate on your Amorims, Anthonys, and Garnachos, the real damaging cost is in missing the Champions League, with its riches and global brand promotion.

But well done on bringing in that £200k licensing deal for club Christmas calendars!

Sorry to burst your balloon, but it just doesn’t matter. Great football as a business is in finding and retaining players, and not making biblical mistakes on coaches and big transfer moves.

If I miss a fairway, I’m not trying to hit some miraculous slice through a three-inch gap in the trees to stick it to five feet. I’m going to swallow my pride, chip it back into the fairway, give myself a look at par, and at worst, walk away with a bogey. You can recover from a bogey. Double bogeys kill your momentum and win tournaments for everyone else.

Tiger Woods

To do all this, a club needs modern systems of scouting and recruitment (based on elite data insights), twinned with serious experience in reading human horse flesh and the male personality. Because ultimately these are badly behaved young men with high competitive testosterone, and too much time and money on their hands. Having great passing stats, and exceeding XG, means little if you are getting arrested for grevious bodily harm.

You need a clear organisation of sporting/technical directors with unambiguous lines of communication and reporting. You need a head coach/manager that buys into all of that protocol, without ego. You need an owner who isn’t star-struck and won’t override all of it for a photo opp. (Yes Gerry, I’m referring to you with your “tsar” Ibra. I’m sorry, but you’re a big boy, a Rhodes scholar, and you are better than what we have seen. Previous Sunday Columns foretold the myriad horrors with your current soujourn in Milano.)

Spiace.

In all this, there is one more element to consider for any serious Investment Committee looking at football clubs, especially now in Italy.

It is a huge advantage if you have a local catchment area that produces quality kids, with loyalty to your club.

Where have you gone Joe di Maggio?

A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

Paul Simon

Never a truer word, during the third World Cup that Italy skips.

Where did Maldini, Nesta, Bergomi, Mancini, Vieri, Zola, Vialli go? The golden conveyor belt seems to have stopped working, and the oven is now broken. Italian football must therefore be populated by old and mediocre foreigners, and the data is damning.

Foreign players take up 67.9% of total minutes in Serie A – the 6th-highest proportion in Europe. By comparison, in Spain the figure is 39.6% and in France it is 48.3%. Foreign players made up 69.1% of all Serie A appearances in the 2025-26 season, meaning Italian players are down to barely 30% of playing time. Serie A ranks 49th out of 50 leagues worldwide for percentage of minutes played by U21 players eligible for the national team – just 1.9%. No Serie A team has exceeded 10% of minutes allocated to under-21s in recent years. Some big clubs dip below 1%. The overall percentage is stuck at around 1.9%, and the minutes that do exist are concentrated on very few players. Some clubs – Juventus, Parma, Verona – gave zero minutes to under-21s. The international comparison is damning: Spanish players who competed in the 2023 U19 European Championship (won by Italy) have since accumulated almost double the minutes in top-flight football and nearly six times more in European competitions than their Italian counterparts. The Italians who finished runners-up at the 2023 U20 World Cup were still largely playing youth football, while their French and English peers had moved on to senior football.

A really good investor, who understands football, will ask if the cause and effect here is perhaps misunderstood.

What if there is a hidden opportunity? What if the Italian talents do exist and something is blocking them. Something that can be fixed?

What is the data telling us about Joe di Maggio?

 

Only thoroughbreds win the Kentucky derby.

And Italian kids seem to win a lot of horse races.

So the raw material does exist, but the pathway to first-team football is almost completely blocked. All these talents languish in Serie B and never get a chance.

Why?

 

Schrödinger’s Calcio.

Italian football is a paradox, a conundrum, simultaneously both alive and dead. Let’s open the box and have a look…….what one sees in there is ultimately the basis of an investment case, or it isn’t.

What is going on?

*
The old idea that you “win nothing with kids”.
Italian football has always been only about the win. The ready-made player is less risky, more street-wise, and “no one ever got sacked buying IBM”.

**
Foreign players, perversely, are often cheaper, with less regulation to overcome.

***
Structural incentives encourage corruption and personal agendas.

****
The power of player agents.

It is the final two answers that highlight the real problem, which, once identified, can be addressed.

The football transfer market is grey and opaque, offering real scope for leakage, in commissions and agent fees. Much of that will find its way to any club official open to a “bung”. Foreign players are precisely the merchandise that generates the cash-flows to enable this corruption, whereas home-grown young kids don’t. Even more insidious is the fact that so many of Italy’s clubs owe agents serious amounts of unpaid commissions, all off Balance Sheet. A type of Merchant of Venice debt, where the pound of flesh requested is in continuing to bring in their foreign client players.

The first question, therefore, in any proposed take-over of an Italian club, is the quantum of unpaid agents’ commisions, and if they are in the dataroom numbers at all.

Even murkier, maybe, is what goes on in youth football operationally, and why some players are favoured over others in crucial moments in their development. It is no hyperbole to hear stories of mothers offering a very personal recompense for coaches delivering game-time to their child.

Sex, power and money. Back to those ancient Romans again! Or good old Charlie Munger:

Show me the incentives and I’ll tell you the outcomes.

So we now know the “why”. Can it be fixed?

 

Why should we look to invest in Italy?

Italian football today is uninvestable for an operator and serious investor.

It can maybe be “traded” as a speculative instrument, hoping for a “greater fool” on future valuation, but the operational fundamentals are unequivocally  broken.

Even our own Como 1907, for all its perceived success, has dropped half a billion to date, and there won’t always be another rich suitor to offer exits north of that sunk cost. At some point, unless it is truly a trophy investment, you need a macro and micro system that is sustainable.

Is that possible?

Today the football macro environment in Italy is weak. Old stadia, a fragile media market, decaying “brand” at both national and club level, and structural competitive disadvantage with Spain, Germany and especially England.

Why should Big Finance invest? Where is the potential for upside?

The media rights situation doesn’t offer much hope. Rights IP has an unhealthy overweighting in the revenue line of all Italian clubs, and all that is now dependent on one bidder, DAZN. This broadcaster has its own challenges, and is trying its very best to get out of old bad deals, to reduce heavy losses. In Italy they will likely remain a bidder, but will most definitely look to rationalise their upfront risk-capital, and there aren’t many other likely bidders around to keep them honest. Sky Italy/Comcast long ago stepped back from material investment in Italian football: they couldn’t make the numbers work. Hopes for a league-owned channel will scare the (club) horses, seeing the horrors in France, as piracy becomes endemic. DAZN isn’t going to offer material upside, and the league will do very well to just maintain current levels. Nothing here for the value-investor.

What about the perennial hope of unlocking match-day with fresh stadia?

The national humiliation around that current state of the game is not banal. Whilst the Italian FA is truly woeful and hopeless, populist politicians will be sensitive to be seen to be working to improve what is important to so many voters. The Sports Minister has already succeeded in replacing the President of the Italian FA this month, Luca Brasi style. There are votes in football, and Italy hasn’t held a major football tournament in 35 years (the last time stadia were built) because it doesn’t have the real estate and infrastructure. One day, however, a very smart private equity fund will approach the federal Italian government and CONI (Sport Italy) to propose a public/private initiative on stadia, likely around bidding for a Euros or World Cup. This has to be done nationally because history shows that individual attempts at stadia are always torpedoed by local council governments, who do not want to see tenants leave the asset they own. One day the stadium handicap for Italian football will end, as the structures are literally falling down. This, in itself, is a good conversation to have for any of the big sport funds and debt lenders.

But the real opportunity lies elsewhere.

Players, it’s always about players. Nothing else matters in European football.

Serie A is last in Europe for revenues generated from sales abroad of players trained in their own country, and clubs are leaving so much potential value on the table by not giving these kids a shop window. The talent is clearly there, but it is just crowded-out and left to wither on the vine.

There is always no better moment to invest than when you smell something the pack doesn’t, the data backs you up, and you sense genuine winds of change.

Something like this.

Italian authorities and politicians are proposing changes to how media rights are distributed, increasing incentives linked to developing and fielding young Italian players. Clubs giving kids a chance could now get much more of the media rights.

 

A bear’s elevator pitch for Italian football.

Not a week goes by that someone in a meeting, podcast, or client Zoom calls me a “bear”.

But what many people don’t understand about bear investing is the nuance of the contrarian. Value investors aren’t sceptical on the consensus because they love pessimism. It’s just because we know that the best financial returns are never made running with the pack. The bear bides his/her time and then moves.

For me, the bottom is in for Italian football. You can taste it.

And you can also see what this country can do in sport, (see tennis), when it gets its hustle on.

 

The hook.

There is now political will to address the two issues blocking Italian football clubs. Stadia and the youth pathway. Both offer significant opportunity for superior returns if you pick the right vehicle.

The Italian football club that makes a specific strategy out of unlocking the blocked local talents is going to find great favour with the government, and be seen as the saviour of Italian football.

But not every club has the characteristics to do this. The one that does, with operational excellence, would be entitled to brand itself, like the Cowboys, as “Italy’s Team”, and create significant equity value, and political capital.

 

The vision.

Set yourself out as the club of the renaissance of Italian football. Give yourself public KPIs on the numbers of starting local kids, and the desired average age of the first team. Offer the elite Italian teen players (and their parents) a clear pathway to playing in Serie A by 18.

State clearly to the fanbase that this is a long term strategy and not to have expectations. The immediate goal of the club is only to maintain its position in Serie A, and anything else is a bonus. Get the ultra fans to buy into this publicly. Brand the club as unashamedly the flag carrier of the Italian game, and the most obvious provider of talents to all levels of the national team. The branding (if one gets creative) could allude to all the apprentice artist shops in Florence, places where young talents like Leonardo and Michelangelo did their graft before emerging. The club should openly embrace the idea that alumni going to bigger clubs will be seen as a sign of a job well done, for the good of the italian game. Obviously for the right fee!

Financially, the wage bill should be manageable with these young kids, and budgeted to be breakeven, before player trading. Excess profits should be seen to be ploughed back into the academy facilites and structure.

 

The target investment.

This needs the right club. It doesn’t work with all.

Those clubs with “expectations” should be avoided, and that removes both Milan clubs, Roma, Juventus. Their fans don’t have the patience for any of this.

It should be a club with a significant fanbase and catchment area, and even better an authentic historic brand. Ideally with likeability.

The candidates.

*
The town of the Renaissance. Fiorentina.
One-club city, serious history, good catchment area.
Tuscany is a fertile region for top footballers, and clearly a great base for the sport tourism play. Their fans however are a bit truculent. Depends on what you could get it for from the American owner Commisso.

**
Lazio
The poor relation of the Roman teams, with the gap widening.
Friedkin at Roma is pulling away. The catchment area is strong. Again, it’s the eternal city and hence perfect to be the flagship club of the national team. The owner, Lotito, is old and has by now run his race; you may get a nice entry price. It however would not be a preference. Lazio fans care only about two things: not being below Roma, and a nasty brand of political affiliation, (they are seen as a fascist club close to Mussolini thinking). They are in the “too much trouble” bucket. 

***
Torino
The original Italian mega-club of the post war years.
Authenticity to die for. In the 40s they basically provided the entire Italian national team, before the whole squad was killed in the Superga air disaster. With Juventus now a shadow of its former self, the city is in play. This offers real possibilities to get fan buy-in. The owner Cairo is hated and may take a less than full bid. You would absolutely play into the Superga history and Valentino Mazzola. Epic storytelling potential. 

****
Napoli
So many positives and upside.
But if the vision is calm, long-term patience and rationality, this is perhaps not your town. You will have a nervous break-down, and maybe too much attention from the “Savastanos”. It’s a no for me, but smaller clubs in the South may be much more appealing. Bari, Lecce and Palermo are such great places to live, and serious locations. But again, maybe, a bit too much “passion” to manage. The Southerns get too excited on too little. High VOL. 

*****
Cagliari
Basically the club of the entire island of Sardinia, the European Maldives.
Perfect for a sport tourism play like in Como. So much brand potential. A serious candidate, as their fans have low expectations. The Sards like all islanders will however be distrustful of mainlanders. Not ideal. 

******
Verona
The town of Romeo and Juliet, basically a smaller version of Rome.
The club of our artist Jacopo Ziliotto. Already owned by an American fund, but they have no idea what they are doing, as usual, and would likely take any kind of exit at this point. Verona is small and not a one-club city. Maybe not, but worth a chat.

 

When in doubt in sport, and your project is of good heart, go back to proper traditions.

Football was introduced to Italy by English sailors kicking a ball in ports like Genova. The virus spread to the bigger cities nearby, like Milan.

Genova has two clubs:

• The first even called itself after the English spelling of the city name. One of the most authentic clubs in the world with a serious history and trophy cabinet, albeit from many years ago. The infamous and ultimately fradulent investment fund 777 had a good vision to try and rebuild the club and brand, but ultimately failed. It’s just not easy. The Genoa fanbase is notoriously aggressive and demanding.

What is the name of the other club in Genova?

• Sampdoria, a club and a strip so beloved by all serious football fans. Seen as friendly and yet truly passionate. No fan expectation now. Always been a perfect nursery for young Italian players. Maybe you can remember a couple?

There is your brand right there, an emotion to bring you to your knees, in the colours of Gli Azzurri. Gianluca Vialli is the perfect testimonial for the rebirth of Italian football, and Sampdoria could be bought with a good entry valuation.

I’d start here.

 

The Execution.

Buying a football club, even with the best premise for success, and with top due diligence, is hard.

[How do you make a small fortune? Start with a big one and buy a football club]

Double that in Italy. Remember the tourist in Capri!

You need to know the right people; the football experts across all the Csuite; the local knowledge; the links to the politicians and key lawyers; the intro to the ultras and club legends. Previous owners, like Andrea Radrizziani, from whom to learn where the bodies are buried. Sampdoria already uses serious data infrastructure, and the recruitment platform is there.

So I’d pitch the double-bubble to a big finance house. The macro play on stadia, and buying Sampdoria to be “Italy’s Team”.

I’d tell them I’m an Italian bull and can see “value”.

Need to wrap up, done enough scribbling, the World Cup is on.

Oh I forgot, No Italy, No Party.

Who cares?