June 10 – US businessman Rocco Commisso has completed his $180 million acquisition of Serie A side Fiorentina.
Commisso is buying the club from shoemaking giants Diego and Andrea Della Valle who acquired the club in 2002 when Fiorentina were bankrupt and were relegated to play in the fourth tier of Italian football.
“There are no words to describe how incredibly honoured I am to have the opportunity to contribute to writing the next chapter in the history of a legendary club like Fiorentina,” said Commisso.
“I would like to thank the Della Valle family for managing Fiorentina over the past 17 years. Diego and Andrea deserve great honours for having saved this society from financial collapse. They leave a solid foundation on which to build the club.”
On the final weekend of the season Fiorentina narrowly avoided relegation after a goalless draw with Genoa to finish 16th in the Serie A table.
Commisso is the founder of cable company Mediacom and took over the New York Cosmos in January 2017 when the New York club’s players and staff had not been paid for several months. The move saved the legendary club and the struggling North American Soccer League (NASL) from bankruptcy, but the NASL folded a year later and since then the Cosmos have been without a league to play in. Commisso filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer, accusing the ruling body of anticompetitive practices that would favour Major League Soccer.
Commisso is the fifth North American owner in Italy’s Serie A. Elliott Management hedge fund owns AC Milan, Chinese investors control InterMilan, James Pallotta bankrolls AS Roma and Canadian Joey Saputo owns Bologna.
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