Aston Villa’s President of Business Operations, Francesco Calvo, has ruled out selling the naming rights for Villa Park in the immediate future, but believes the club can still grow in other areas.
The 46-year-old was appointed in his current position earlier this summer having replaced Chris Heck in the role, and it’s hoped that he can build on the positive work done by his predecessor, while continuing to move the club in the right direction off the pitch both in terms of competitiveness and what’s in the best interests of supporters.
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Having spoken so brilliantly in his introductory interview with VillaTV last month to make a positive first impression, the Villa chief has covered various topics in depth in his latest discussion on the club, as he emphasised the importance of both Monchi and Unai Emery in our push to become successful on the pitch.
Further, he praised owners Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens for their investment and ambitions for the club, and it’s hoped that Calvo can play a fundamental role in overseeing growth and expansion off the pitch to help us continue to make progress on it in the coming years.
“In a world of football where people generally are pretty nervous because everything is self-driven, Monchi is a calm person, which I like. Unai is our real added-value because he allows us to over-perform our budget The club relies, thankfully, a lot on Unai but then we need to provide him the right team every year and right ammunition to fight the others,” he told The Times.
“The owners have been and are still investing a lot. They invested £50million to renew the hospitality of Villa Park and now there is an expansion project to increase the dimension of the stadium [to 50,000 capacity, up from 42,000] but commercially we sit behind the big six and I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to fill the gap. But we have to work really hard to understand the opportunities. Birmingham is the second biggest city of the UK and I need to understand what Villa really represents here and in the Midlands, and understand the business community and if there are opportunities or not. For us the best opportunity at the moment is working harder than the others and to try to be more creative than the others.
“No one has asked me for a revolution; the ownership haven’t asked to be the No1 club in the Premier League. They know it takes time.”
However, as previously has been criticised by Sawiris and other key figures at the club, Calvo is fully aware of the current financial regulations in place that continue to limit Villa’s ambition and desire to compete at a higher level, as the club have continued to struggle to comply with PSR and UEFA’s SCR rules.
That in turn has led to player sales which in itself stunts progression, while Villa made the decision to sell the women’s team earlier this summer and appear to be actively trying to cut our wage bill to ensure to don’t fall foul of the financial rules in the coming years.
Calvo has echoed the sentiment of others in terms of the limitations the regulations put on our desire to keep building, but he’s hopeful that we’ll find ways to solidify our position and hopefully continue to move in the right direction.
“The rules of football are a concern. A limiter. There are limits to how much the owners can invest, which then [improves] performance on the pitch, which drives revenues. Though I do believe, with the performance we have already, we have room to grow revenues On one side, football was a disaster in terms of losses until a few years ago and the situation has been improving thanks to the rules. However, on the other, the rules create a limit to invest to compete at the highest level.
“So it’s kind of restricting competition. There are the usual suspects competing in every country and let’s say that’s an element of concern for us. We clearly need to sell and to buy players, we need to be careful because we need to comply with regulations. Investing [in transfers] is not always synonymous with succeeding, and our approach will be to work harder and smarter than anyone else. Harder is easy, smarter no.
“What Wes and Nassef have done in six years is incredible. They are extremely ambitious and extremely disciplined. Now, we’ve been losing money because we’ve been investing a lot. And now they are fully aware we’re entering a different phase where we need to comply with regulations, we have certain constraints, but the ambition doesn’t stop.”
Similarly to the decision to sell the women’s team, there are other options available to Villa to try and increase revenue and not only balance our books but fund our push to improve the squad, one of which is selling the naming rights to Villa Park.
However, Calvo didn’t sound open to that at this stage, as he noted that there are other areas in which Villa can still increase income, and those will likely be considered as a priority before the Villa Park naming rights come into the equation, which certainly sounds like the sensible approach.
“It hasn’t been a top priority up to now. We know Villa Park is a historical name and we cannot change the name. That’s a given. But [an alternative] is something we can look at, absolutely, in time. We have the training ground, the training kit. We have the jersey coming up next year, so we have a lot of inventory and we focus on that.
“In the end we are from Birmingham, we are an English club, we represent the history of English football and if I look at our revenues then our beautiful stadium is here, our TV subscribers are here. It’s important to think with two hearts. The heart of the club, because we need to drive the club forward, but also the heart of the fans. What do they want. They are not consumers — they’re fans.”
Calvo went on to reiterate that he will emphasise that Villa are represented within the Premier League more effectively so as to have a say and influence on decisions that might impact us, as if we simply have no presence whatsoever, we can’t complain when regulations go against us having been absent when it mattered.
Meanwhile, he also re-emphasised that his full focus is on helping Villa grow and become more successful, and everything involved in his job is ultimately to help the football side, and he’ll do that to the best of his ability while he’s in the position, with our owners evidently trusting him to be the right man for the job for the foreseeable future.
“In the end we all play football. Everything we do here is to support the football side. Let’s say, in the future, the club is moving so smoothly to a different level and is challenging [the elite] on and off the pitch so constantly that nobody will realise I’m here. That I’m so embedded in the club that ‘Calvo the foreigner’ doesn’t exist. That’s the ambition. Football is often a one-man show which is something I really dislike. Now, when I speak I have that crest and the lion behind me. Without it I’m nothing.”
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