Bernard Caïazzo spoke about the possible sale of ASSE, during a hearing as part of an information mission on audiovisual broadcasting rights for sporting events. He profiled the buyer he wanted to let go of the club’s reins.
“I would like to find a billionaire who can put the same money as Rybolovlev in Monaco, or McCourt in Marseille. It’s not that easy, declared the chairman of the Supervisory Board of Saint-Etienne (comments relayed by Envertetcontretous.fr). You have people who say they can afford it, but in the end they don’t have much and will do rather worse than what we have been doing for twenty years. We are affected by an age limit. Roland Romeyer at 76, I’m 67 and it’s inevitable. We are forced to go through an inheritance process. But behind this, a football club is not a business like any other. There is an extremely important social, media and public dimension. You can’t say I’ll get rid of it and don’t care what happens next. “
“I would compare Saint-Etienne today to AJ Auxerre of the Guy Roux era”
He hopes to find a buyer capable of upgrading the Saint-Etienne institution: “The ideal profile, to take this club a course which is on average 5th in the championship over the last ten years, having the eighth, ninth budget in France. To take a step forward, that means for me to have the capacity of a group that invests several hundred million euros to move to a top 4 club! To move to a top 4 club, Claude Puel’s excellent training policy is not enough. You have to move on to another policy where you have high-level executives capable of bringing the team to this top 4. It is a necessity. I would compare Saint-Etienne today to AJ Auxerre of the Guy Roux era. Training policy, very experienced coach, it would look more like that with a stronger media dimension, certainly. We are led to make this training policy. The greatest happiness that could happen to us is to have successors with much greater means “, he continued.
As a reminder, Bernard Caïazzo became president of ASSE in 2004, replacing Thomas Schmider. Didier Quillot would have taken particular information about a possible investment a few weeks ago.