Feature: Chinese Suning's takeover of Inter Milan is positive challenge

The acquisition by China's retail giant Suning Group of a majority stake in Italian soccer club Inter Milan has been welcomed positively in Italy, but is also seen as a big challenge which needs time to prove successful, Italian experts told Xinhua.

"All of our supporters were enthusiastic and moved by Suning's strong commitment to bring Inter back to its glory days. After two and a half years of austerity, they finally heard talk about great champions who can return to their team," said Michele Borrelli, editor-in-chief of Inter Supporters TV, Italy's web television for Inter Milan's supporters.

The acquisition was announced by Suning in a joint press conference with Inter Milan executives in Nanjing earlier this week. Suning will take control of 68.6 percent of Inter Milan, according to a deal worth 270 million euros (305 million U.S. dollars), Italian media reports said.

Suning chairman Zhang Jindong said he would "make Inter stronger than ever, one of the best of the Serie A and European soccer."

Borrelli said supporters especially appreciated the cultural value, besides the financial one, attached to the deal by Zhang. The chairman said Inter was the first European soccer team to visit China in 1978, and it is the number one soccer team in terms of number of fans in China.

The only fear expressed by supporters, Borrelli added, was that the new owners after a first period of euphoria may be faced with the "many bureaucratic and political difficulties of Italian football and related infrastructural investments, and decide to give up."

"In fact, all Chinese companies without a solid policy on internationalization meet obstacles in entering the European market, and problems increase when speaking about a special sector, the world of football, whose difficulties should never be underestimated," Airaldo Piva, CEO of Milan-based Hengdian Group Europe, explained.

To deal with Italian football, Piva said, also means having to deal with very local factors and relations, be them sports, business or political ones.

The ideal for this kind of operation, he went on saying, would be to already have an office in Italy with trusted personnel who have a deep knowledge of the country.

Also, Piva added, it would pose less risks to initially take a minority stake in Italian football clubs so as to gradually "get used to" the new world.

"China's investments in Italian football are very good for China to acquire know-how and experience for the development of its sports industry, and at the same time a way for many troubled Italian clubs to derive new oxygen from Chinese capital," Piva said.

Another important policy to promote the performance of Chinese football, he added, would be an increased appointment of high-level football academies in the Asian country to cultivate not only players, but also talented coaches.

Andrea Pretti is a FIFA, the world football governing body, football agent and founder of TPS (Tommasi Pretti Sports Co., Ltd.), an agency of sports management based in China's capital Beijing and mainly dealing with football.

Suning's acquisition was a very good one from the point of view of brand equity, he said.

But it is fundamental to take the big picture into consideration also in the mid and long term, including the technical aspects, he underlined.

"Do not get fascinated only with famous clubs and great champions. There is a very complex reality behind them," was his suggestion.

For this reason, Pretti agreed with Piva that it was key to trust local football professionals who know the market in depth so as to be able to distinguish between well-managed and poorly-managed clubs. Inter Milan, for example, had debts amounting to 417 million euros (475 million U.S. dollars).

"I travel to China once or twice a month, and I have noticed that the acquisition of a football club is often seen as the goal at the end of a complex negotiation," Pretti said.

"But in order to make things works in the long term, it should always be remembered that today it is not the finish line, but the starting point," he said. Endit