Marotta: “Too much is played and the risk lies entirely with the clubs”

Another Champions League final or the second star? Beppe Marotta would toss a coin. “What comes comes, obviously but this time we should win the final.” The CEO of Inter, together with the president of Milan Paolo Scaroni, took part in the “Sport Industry Talk” of the RCS Academy, a round table on the future of football. A future which for the Milanese teams also means a new stadium. For Marotta it is “a phenomenon of clear national interest”. According to the Nerazzurri manager “we should make the process for the construction of the systems more fluid, avoiding going through the municipalities and regions. However, we must also talk about sports centers. Many Serie A clubs don’t have them, Inter itself has a beautiful one, but it is lacking in infrastructure for its youth teams. We would also need a contribution from the school system to let children play football. Today even in oratories you have to pay a membership fee. This also leads to problems in generating talent.”

The new facility would be a fundamental step towards putting the clubs’ accounts in order: “We don’t need a cathedral in the desert – continues Marotta – but a usable and profitable facility even on days when the match isn’t played. And then, obviously, we need to valorise the television rights, to get closer to the 4 billion collected by the Premier League.” To Scaroni who jokes about the “competition between Fifa and UEFA to create new competitions”, Marotta echoes: “Yes, we play too much. Barella played 57 games last year, there have already been over 150 injuries in the Premier League this season. And the business risk lies in the clubs: with Eriksen, for example, we devalued an asset by 20 million without any responsibility.”