The Granata president and president of RCS MediaGroup talks to Aldo Cazzullo at the Trento Festival: “The balance sheet is very positive, to date I have put in 72 million euros. I won’t stay for life, but at the moment I haven’t received any offers”
There is a lot, a lot of sport in the “Dreams of a Lifetime” by Urbano Cairo, the president and CEO of Rcs MediaGroup, told at the Trento Sports Festival. From Toro to his childhood dream of becoming a footballer passing through the Giro d’Italia, Urbano Cairo talks about himself interviewed by the Corriere della Sera journalist, Aldo Cazzullo. This year he crossed the finish line of twenty years of presidency of Torino and it starts from here: “The balance of these twenty years is positive, very positive, I enjoyed it – says president Cairo -. As in all activities, during these twenty years there have been moments in which things have gone well, others less well. They have been twenty years of passion. I have done it willingly and I would do it again”. And he adds: “I won’t stay at Toro for life, I’ve already said it many times. But there must be someone who is a candidate and who gives guarantees to allow Toro to do good things and to prevent them from exploiting him as well. It’s a very delicate thing. At the moment I haven’t received any offers, I’ve given my willingness to sell Toro but at the moment I don’t have a proposal and I can’t say that we are negotiating to sell Toro. I have no negotiations because I don’t have any offers.”
that time in 1999
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From the album of memories he takes out an episode dating back to 1999. “I was already thinking about Toro in ’99, but we never got to talking to each other at the time. Instead, a team I watched in those years was Genoa, before Toro, they also took me to the president of the time but we didn’t reach an agreement. Then in 2005 the mayor of Turin, Chiamparino, called me and I made my availability available. At that moment in Turin no one came forward. alive: probably the mayor also called me because there was no one else there.” Cazzullo asks him about the relationship with the Toro fans, he replies: “At Toro I always behaved in management as if the fans were all in my favor. I never, not even for a moment, doubted whether an investment should be made because I was contested. I was always sure that things had to be done for the good of the team. There are those who contest me, but there are a lot of people who, when they see me, ask me for a selfie. There are a lot of people who write to me ‘go ahead, don’t give up, if you hadn’t arrived who knows where we would be’. A falling tree makes more noise than a growing forest.”
72 million
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Regarding the budget of this twenty-year period, Cairo does the math: “To date, from my own pocket, I have put a whopping 72 million into Toro. The proceeds from capital gains and TV rights have served to pay the costs. What matters is how much I put into the cash register. In 2005, for example, the first thing I did was increase the share capital from 200,000 euros to 10 million euros because there was a need to make the football transfer market, since the Taurus that I took in 2005, he had 8 expert players, and the best was Oscar Brevi who was 38 years old”.
dreams
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Sport also returns in other fragments of the story of a life. “As a child – says president Cairo – the thing I liked so much was football, and I read the Gazzetta dello Sport as well as the Corriere and the Notte. My dream was to be a footballer. Then I played in the Pro Sesto, at the beginning we played in the gardens, then in the courtyard where I played alone against four or five. This thing didn’t help me in football because I became a great Venetian. And so I never passed it. At the Pro Sesto I was a right winger, I I had a couple of good championships, I also looked promising. Then I moved to another club, Cantù, in the end I said to myself that it was better for me to study.” He remembers how “my first team was Milan, but I always said it, and my idol at the time was Gianni Rivera. Another great player that I liked so much was Claudio Sala, who I tried to imitate in every way. And then the Goal Twins, the great Toro strikers Pulici and Graziani”. He closes by recalling today’s experiences in the flagship during the Giro d’Italia: “Touring Italy with the Giro d’Italia is a beautiful thing.”
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