Serie A and her egotistical presidents

Last season Claudio Lotito stated that he wields more power than the head of Serie A.

He also wanted to ensure that small and unfashionable sides like Frosinone and Carpi would not be promoted into the topflight division, something that could effect Italian football’s televisual appeal.

So who is Lotito?  A high ranking representative of the government or perhaps an influential media mogul that holds the rights to the lucrative TV contract?

He is neither, he is the president of Lazio.

And that, in a nutshell, gives an insight into how many current Serie A owners conduct themselves at the highest level of football on the peninsula.

Egocentric megalomaniacs who often feel they are above law and order.

Lotito is not the only man to use his position in the sport as a form of soap box to state his views and, in many cases, ultimately carry them out.

AC Milan president Silvio Berlusconi rose to the very pinnacle of Italian politics, voted in as Prime Minister on more than one occasion.

Using his platform at the helm of one of the world’s biggest football clubs, he called his political party ‘Forza Italia’, after a famous football chant for followers of the Italian national team, and often used football parlance to get his point across.

“I have chosen to take the field,” Berlusconi said in 1994 after announcing the start of his political career on Italian TV.

Berlusconi named his team of constituent candidates ‘Azzurri’ and his local parties were known as ‘clubs’.

Incredibly it worked, Berlusconi becoming Italy’s 50th Prime Minister in 1994 as well as having stints running the country between 2001 and 2006 as well as 2008 and 2011.

Only in Italy…

Other presidents prefer to get involved directly in match affairs, doing everything they can to make sure their side has the edge against the next opponent. Unfortunately, this does not mean they dust off their old boots, squeeze inside a club tracksuit and start the morning session warm-up with members of the squad.

Current Genoa owner Enrico Preziosi was far more ‘hands-on’ when in 2005 he offered players a monetary incentive to ensure his Grifone were promoted to Serie A, with the team needing only a victory over an already-relegated Venezia team.

Unfortunately, the €250,000 reward was destined for the Venetians and not those playing for Genoa.

Recorded phone calls revealed the extent of the match-fixing bribe and although the Rossoblu won the match 3–2 securing promotion, they were immediately demoted to Serie C1 once the discovery was made and the investigation by the Italian League’s disciplinary commission was concluded.

Despite narrowly avoiding a jail term for his ‘scoreline manipulation’, Preziosi still heads Genoa and continues to run the club in Serie A.

Further south, Palermo chief Maurizio Zamparini is an altogether different president, famous for his itchy trigger finger and outrageous comments.  Never one to dodge the TV cameras or the limelight, the fiery club owner has sacked 20 coaches in under 15 years in Sicily.

And if faith in his hired tacticians wasn’t already troubling, some of his off-the-cuff comments are equally, if not more of a concern.

In 2011, after a loss to Cagliari, he proclaimed that ‘referees deserved to go to prison’, after witnessing some questionable decision-making by the man in the middle.

In 2007, he threatened to quit the game, after footballing authorities decided to investigate him over comments made regarding Romanian striker Adrian Mutu.

The Fiorentina forward, having scored a goal whilst a Palermo player was down injured and in need of treatment, was dubbed a ‘sneaky Romanian gypsy’ by Zamaprini.

“all Romanians have it in their DNA to be sneaky,” Zamparini added after Palermo’s 1–1 draw.

Zamparini refused to apologise for his comments claiming that if he was kicked out of football, then ‘it would do him a favour’.

Napoli’s Aurelio De Laurentiis can also be credited with making some outlandish statements of his own. The film distributor, who can boast directors such as Ridley Scott, David Lynch and the Coen brothers amongst his clients, has never held back when it comes to over-dramatising situations.

In 2008, the Partenopei patron gave his players some sound advice after English Premier League teams made enquiries over stars such as Marek Hamsik and Ezequiel Lavezzi.

“If they want to go to England then in the end they’re going to go. But they need to understand this: the English live badly, eat badly and their women do not wash their genitalia. To them, a bidet is a mystery.”

His guidance paid off as Hamsik remains a Napoli player whilst Argentine striker Lavezzi decided not to take any chances and moved to PSG in France instead, where women obviously are well aware of the benefits of the bidet.

Over in Sardinia, ex-patron Massimo Cellino did spend some time behind bars back in 2013. Now at Leeds United, the entrepreneur was accused of fraud and embezzlement of funds regarding the building of Cagliari’s new IS arena stadium.

The structure had neither the paperwork nor permission authorising its construction, though this didn’t seem to stop Cellino with his plans, having allegedly intimidated council officials in order to get his way.

He remained in custody for 16 days before being released under house-arrest and then returning to run his club.

More recently, and perhaps more worryingly, has been the demise of Emilia-Romagna side, Parma.  The Gialloblu suffered financial collapse over the summer and have been forced to start again in Serie D, as a new entity now known as Parma Calcio 1913.

Having been sold twice in the space of three months since Christmas 2014, the three presidents involved blamed one another as to who should shoulder the responsibility for Parma’s fall from grace.

Tommaso Ghiradi, who on the surface of things had appeared to have done a fine job running the club since 2007, decided to sell up in December 2014, apparently disillusioned with the Ducali’s exclusion from European football (over rising debts) despite having finished in a UEFA Europa League spot at the end of the 2013-14 campaign.

He sold the club for one euro to an Albanian businessman, Rezart Taci, who went on to claim that Ghirardi had failed to reveal the full extent of the financial problems the club was facing.

Taci, obviously having no intention of pumping in the funds needed to bail Parma out of trouble, palmed off the team to Italian Giampietro Manenti — again for just one euro — in February 2015.

Despite a new owner, salaries remained unpaid, club equipment was seized, heating bills remained outstanding, training facilities sold and matches postponed.

Manenti promised cash was on its way, but instead found himself arrested for money laundering in March 2015, effectively sealing Parma’s eventual fate.

But how did it ever get to this?

How could three owners be allowed to come and go without understanding the full extent of the issues and without the desire, and possibly backing, to get the club back on its feet?

Simply, because they can and there is little the authorities appear to be doing to stop it happening.

These men want a slice of the action in the hope they can become ‘someone’, be it the leader of a country, the saviour of a club in crisis, the bearer of morals or a social commentator.

Instead, they enter a world of deceit, trickery, skullduggery, pretentiousness and irresponsibility.