Juventus won’t spend their way to success

SINGAPORE — Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli took aim at big-money clubs Paris St-Germain (PSG), Manchester City and Chelsea, saying the record 30-time Italian Serie A champions are not prepared to spend their way to success.

Agnelli has made closing the gap on Europe’s richest clubs his priority, but this is ultimately driven by how the team are doing on the pitch. In a recent interview at the Fullerton Hotel, Agnelli told TODAY it is highly unlikely Juventus would adopt the “Galactico” way of paying record fees to acquire stars.

“If you look at the history of Juventus in transfer markets, it has always been one of intelligent buys,” he said. “Ibrahimovic came to us before everybody else; Zidane came to us before becoming a Galactico. Platini came to us when he was a nobody, same for Vidal from Bayer Leverkusen,” Agnelli said of the leading players from Sweden, France and Chile who signed for Juve in the past.

“And all of this for similar investments in the region of €20 million (S$33.6 million). That is the investment Juventus would make.”

The term “Galactico” was coined more than 10 years ago to reflect Spanish giants Real Madrid’s transfer policy under club president Florentino Perez of signing at least one superstar every season.

While Real are typically involved in some of the world’s biggest transfers — including Gareth Bale for a record €107.6 million last year and recently, Colombia star James Rodriguez for €80 million from Monaco — Juventus’ most expensive purchase was the €51 million they paid to bring goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon from Parma in 2001.

Agnelli insisted the club, who play their home matches at the 41,000-seater Juventus Stadium in Turin, will stick to a prudent transfer policy that helped them secure their third successive Serie A title in May.

“The press and fans, rightly so, are interested in the big names, big transfers and big money,” he said. “(But) we bought Paul Pogba, Andrea Barzagli and Andrea Pirlo for a combined €1.4 million. That’s not very interesting to write about, but that’s what we should be focused about.”

Instead, the 38-year-old, who is also a board member of Italian automaker FIAT and latest in the Agnelli family to run Juventus after grandfather Edoardo, uncle Gianni and father Umberto, took a swipe at football’s nouveau riche.

“You have three clubs that kind of ‘drug’ the environment — Manchester City, PSG, and to a certain extent, Chelsea — that don’t just spend the money they make, but use capital injection from their shareholders year-on-year. I cannot say it’s unfair, but it distorts the market,” said Agnelli.

The ability of PSG, City and Chelsea to attract the biggest names was largely helped by the takeover made by the Qatari Sports Investment in 2011, Sheikh Mansour in 2008, and Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich in 2003 respectively.

Last year, Deloitte ranked PSG as the world’s fifth-richest club with €398.8 million in revenue, followed by City (€316.2 million) and Chelsea (€303.4 million), while Juventus were ninth (€272.4 million).

But Agnelli acknowledged it could prove an uphill task competing with clubs with very deep pockets.

“You try to walk on your own two feet, but you (can) have a guy next to you on a trampoline,” he said. “You can jump as high as possible, but when this guy walks on a trampoline, he’s going to walk higher than you.”

Juventus play a Singapore Selection at the National Stadium this Saturday as part of the club’s pre-season tour of Asia To win tickets to this match, a Juventus training session and signed footballs, take part in the TODAY online contest at http://tdy.sg/juvecontest.