What to expect from The Friedkin Group at Everton | Interview with a Roma blog Pt 2

What to expect from The Friedkin Group at Everton | Interview with a Roma blog Pt 2

Everton announced today they have granted US-based The Friedkin Group a period of exclusivity to complete their due diligence and both sides are said to be close to inking a deal to buy Farhad Moshiri’s majority stake in Everton Football Club. We spoke earlier in the week to SB Nation’s AS Roma blog Chiesa Di Totti about what their experience has been with Dan Friedkin at the helm of the Italian Serie A side since 2020.

We are deeply indebted to CDT editor Bren for taking the time to answer our questions. The questions were broken out into four categories, with Ownership and Supporters addressed in Part 1 and Infrastructure and Transfer covered in Part 2 today.

Signings

RBM: Are they likely to make changes at Director of Football and manager early on, or let the current situation play out naturally? (Kevin)

CDT: When they took control of Roma, the boardroom was already in flux. Monchi’s disastrous tenure as Director of Sport ended in 2019, forcing the club to quickly pivot and panic hire Gianluca Petrachi from Torino. Petrachi held the position for approximately a year before burning every bridge on his way out of Rome, so the job became available by default. Their handpicked successor, Tiago Pinto, left before his contract expired, too, so this may not be their strong suit!

I’m not familiar with Everton’s organizational structure to make any guesses, but if they follow the Roma blueprint, I would imagine they’ll give the incumbents a chance, albeit with an extremely short leash.

Do they appoint football professionals and give them a free hand to do their jobs? (Kevin)

I’d say so. As we’ve discussed, they operate in the shadows, preferring to let their football people make the football decisions. Their first two DS hires with Roma have been young and relatively inexperienced, which hasn’t gone swimmingly, but they don’t pretend to have an intimate or nuanced understanding of the sport, so you won’t have to worry about your owner living out their Football Manager dreams in real life.

How involved are TFG in player recruitment, do they leave things to the director of football and head coach? (Geoff)

As far as we can tell, they tend to leave the football decisions to the experts, but they are men of means and can step up to push a signing over the line when needed. Things may be different in Everton, but they’ve been pretty hands-off with Roma’s personnel decisions.

Have TFG adequately backed the DoF in the transfer market with funds to spend? Any FFP issues? (Calvin)

I’m trying to answer this without bursting into laughter (or tears, if I’m being real). Apart from their €100 million binge the first summer, which completely blew up in their faces, they haven’t invested much at all in the transfer market. They did well to sign Paulo Dybala as a free agent and land Romelu Lukaku on loan, but they haven’t spent much at all on actual transfers, largely due to the FFP bogeyman. They also sold Riccardo Calafiori for peanuts, and now he looks like the second coming of Paulo Maldini, so their transfer track record isn’t great.

However, to be fair to the Friedkins, Monchi screwed up Roma so spectacularly that it may take a decade before the clubs’ head is back above water. So, unless they flip the bird to FFP, their hands are kind of tied until the club returns to the Champions League.

A model of the Rome’s new stadium project designed by US architect Dan Meis during a press conference on March 26, 2014

Infrastructure

What has stopped the building of the new stadium that was designed by Dan Meis? (Peter)

How much time do you have!? The stadium has been waylaid by too many issues to recount–I even recall one story involving the stadium impinging on a local frog habitat–but in a nutshell, the notoriously fickle Italian bureaucracy has stopped this project in its tracks. If it wasn’t already difficult enough to build in a 2,000-year-old city, having every Tom, Dick, and Harry trying to get their piece of the pie has made it practically impossible.

They’ve run through several possible locations already and reduced the footprint and scope of the project, but it just keeps getting choked by red tape, political gamesmanship, and profiteering. Honestly, it’s become a bit of a running joke at this point, and I see no hope on the horizon for the Stadio della Roma, which is a shame because it really was a beautiful design.

Roma have by far the best social media team in world football - was that a TFG innovation? (Calvin)

No, credit for that goes to the Pallotta administration (and specifically the former media boss Paul Rogers), who dragged the club kicking and screaming into the 21st century, completely transforming its digital media presence and blazing new trails in fan outreach, marketing, and content creation.