Marotta: “Inter will invest in young players”. The second Under 23 team is ready

MILAN. A younger Inter on the pitch and more American in its approach to increasing revenue. These are the indications that emerged from the club's shareholders' meeting, held this afternoon at San Siro (attended by the President of the Senate, Ignazio La Russa, an Inter fan who also attended the meeting last spring). It was Beppe Marotta who illustrated the new strategy, which also includes the creation of the Under 23 team in the next Serie C championship. Inter B, which will play in Monza, will be the fourth second team launched by Serie A clubs, after Juventus, Atalanta and Milan .

The Nerazzurri president and CEO explained the assumptions of the new cycle in a press conference, after leading the meeting flanked by the two Oaktree managers, Katherine Ralph and Alejandro Cano, who then left Marotta alone to face the questions, confirming the idiosyncrasy of the American owners to appear in public. "There won't be a revolution," says the Lombard executive, "the owners want to return to investing in young players, who can become assets. Player trading cannot be ignored."

A question of project and future. «The average age of the teams in the Italian championship and the Champions League has dropped – adds Marotta -: it is logical and right to adapt. This does not mean that our senators will be excluded, we will carefully evaluate all the positions. Changing the model does not reduce the objectives, when we talk about Inter we talk about the verb 'to win'. But I am not talking about a radical change. In recent years we have made few investments, signing free agents. I want to go back to making more investments, but it does not mean changing 12 players. Above all it means rejuvenating the squad, and this is done with investments. We are looking to build assets, creating a real budget proposal, which can provide technical assets. Oaktree has given us this opportunity».

So next summer Inter will be able to buy without having to sacrifice key players. This is also thanks to the increasing revenues thanks to the excellent results at international level. The next budget could be the first for Inter in many years to close close to the balance between income and expenditure. To name a few profiles followed in this new perspective of renewal on the Nerazzurri notebooks are Maximo Perrone and Nico Paz of Como, Gianluca Busio of Venezia, Samuele Ricci of Torino, Santiago Castro of Bologna. Without forgetting the already concluded purchase of the Croatian Petar Sucic, arriving in June.

It is not only the ownership that is American, the United States will become an increasingly central horizon of commercial policies : "A new season of collaboration with partner companies is taking shape and we must be able to develop new strategies to attack the most important markets in the world. The first of all is the American market. In the next two years, the United States of America will be the world center of soccer. Summer 25, Clubs' World Cup. Summer 26, the World Cup", said Marotta in his speech to shareholders.

Also looking across the Atlantic are two of the three new members of the Board of Directors after the departures of Alessandro Antonello (former CEO of the corporate side), Amedeo Carassai and Carlo Marchetti. Claudia D'Arpizio, senior partner at Bain, an American investment fund, will join. For Bain, D'Arpizio is also global head of Fashion and Luxury, a sector that can be very useful from the point of view of new sponsorships. The second new member of the Board of Directors: Diego Gigliani, president and general manager of the Major League Soccer club St. Louis City FC . Previously, Gigliani worked for over a decade at City Football Group and Manchester City, most recently as head of European and Latin American club management and partner for the United Arab Emirates group, a role that included setting a strategic direction to achieve synergies within the Multi Club Ownership system. The third new advisor is Massimiliano Catanese, who was already appointed a few months ago as Inter's head of personnel , a role that sees him at the forefront of the cost containment policy with some cuts wanted by Oaktree in the organization chart and workforce of the Nerazzurri club.

The figure of the outgoing councilor Carassai was at the center of a question posed by the correspondent of Le Iene, Filippo Roma, to Marotta. Under observation is the role of Carassai who is also the director of the investment company Piomo which, in July 2021, became the controlling shareholder with 91.7% of the capital of the Italian Microgame, a company active in the gaming and betting sector . "I take note of it", Marotta limited himself to telling the correspondent of the Mediaset program, according to whom Carassai's position would raise some doubts from the point of view of the rules of sports justice. The Nerazzurri lawyers, consulted by the club after the episode, maintain that there are no profiles of conflict with the federal rules. And according to the FIGC there would also be no profiles of incompatibility.