Over lunch at his villa outside Milan with football "super-agent" Jorge Mendes, Italian tycoon Silvio Berlusconi realized "an unpleasant truth: his storied club, AC Milan, needed cash, and plenty of it," according to Barbaglia & Jourdan of REUTERS. Mendes was reportedly "discussing the potential sale of Colombian star James Rodriguez from Real Madrid" for €85M ($95M) -- cash that "loss-making, debt-burdened AC Milan simply did not have." Weeks later, Berlusconi became the latest European club owner "to sell out to Chinese buyers, in a shopping spree that has caught up clubs from England's Aston Villa to France's OGC Nice" and adds up to around $3B since December alone. AC Milan, if the preliminary agreement announced last week is confirmed, "will mark one of the largest club deals to date in European football" -- valuing the club at €740M ($827M). Yet the buyers -- Li Yonghong, Li Han and Haixia Capital, and a handful of other entities not named -- are "unknown and untested in European football." Lou Yicheng, a veteran sports commentator in China, said, "If I'm honest, I haven't got a clue who Li Han and Li Yonghong are. There are certainly lots of questions that still need answering." No European FA has "yet raised major concerns about the influx of Chinese money," though most "do have some provision to consider" if new owners are "fit and proper." For China, it is "about boosting its clout in an almost universally popular sport," encouraged by President Xi Jinping, who has made it a goal to host and win the World Cup. London-based football finance specialist David Bick said, "It has become increasingly clear that China intends to become a major force in world football." It is also about taking opportunities -- "getting a slice of the lucrative global love affair with live sports, for which sponsors and TV and internet viewers will pay up" (REUTERS, 8/14).
