Dan Friedkin’s proposed takeover of Everton has a major advantage over his existing foray into European football ownership at Roma when it comes to the club’s stadium issue.
With Everton released from the grip of 777 Partners at the end of May after their Share Purchase Agreement expired some eight-and-a-half months on from wantaway majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri striking a deal to sell his entire 94.1% stake to the controversial Miami-based private investment firm, a number of interested parties stepped forward to offer varying takeover bids. The Friedkin Group won that battle and became the fourth potential buyer in the past couple of years to enter into a period of exclusivity with Moshiri.
ECHO business of football writer Dave Powell reported last week that the takeover “still has a significant amount of road to travel.” He added: “It is not a deal that is cut and dried, with it only progressing if the Friedkin Group are satisfied after reviewing all aspects of the business,” and while “the goal remains to strike a deal”, “nothing is imminent, and the process won’t be hurried along.”
However, one area where Everton are in a significantly stronger position than the team already owned by Friedkin, currently ranked number 271 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the world’s richest people, and is calculated as having a net worth of $9.2billion (approximately £7.27billion), is with their stadium. Construction on the Blues’ new 52,888 capacity stadium on the banks of the Mersey is expected to be completed by the end of this calendar year with the first team moving in at the start of the 2025/26 season after 133 years playing at Goodison Park.
Although Dan Friedkin and his son Ryan, who plays a prominent role at Roma and is expected to do the same at Everton if the takeover bid is successful, were present, representatives of the Friedkin Group arrived in Liverpool last week to visit club offices at the Royal Liver Building plus the new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock. But while Everton’s long-standing new stadium dream is about to be turned into a reality, Roma’s in contrast remains on the drawing board for now.
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Ironically, Friedkin’s fellow American Dan Meis’ first venture into European football also came with Roma. The architect of Everton Stadium, who returned to the project under the title of concept design guardian, was tasked with designing the proposed Stadio Della Roma over a decade ago.
Meis’ renderings – for what was also a 52,000 capacity riverside stadium – by the banks of the Tiber – were unveiled to great fanfare at a press conference in the Italian capital on March 26, 2014, some two-and-a-half years before he first visited the prospective sites of Bramley-Moore Dock in Vauxhall and Stonebridge Cross in Croxteth with Everton officials on October 14, 2016. However, while the Blues’ iconic future home is now almost complete, Roma’s plans, based around the ancient colosseum, have never got off the ground.
On February 2, 2017, the Region of Lazio and the Mayor of Rome rejected the proposal and although it was later approved following adjustments to the design, on February 26, 2021, with Friedkin having purchased Roma from James Pallotta for $591million the previous August, the project was halted. While the original plans were to build on the site of the closed Tor di Valle Racecourse in the south west of the city, the new-look project is being proposed for the Pietralata borough in the far north east, some 13 miles away but despite archaeological surveys having taken place earlier this year, there still hasn’t been a spade in the ground in terms of stadium construction.
As Meis told the ECHO in August 2022 when explaining how fans at Everton Stadium will be “part of the game” in a way that they’re not as so many other new grounds, he expressed his disappointment at the way things had panned out with the Serie A side. He said: “I can’t tell you how many stadiums I’ve drawn over the years that for one reason or another didn’t get built. I have a tattoo from Rome, I worked on the Roma stadium for six or seven years and now the club has been sold and the project has gone.
“We’ve overcome a lot of things here, things that you’d have never imagined, from the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and all kinds of things that have thrown hurdles at the club. but the incredible thing, and I don’t think any of the fans were truly aware of this, was how committed the club was from the very beginning. This was not an easy undertaking in so many ways, including walking away from a beloved place.
“It was bold, it was thoughtful and was visionary, not only in picking a site that has a great impact for the club but has a great impact on the city and the entire region. The fact that we’ve got to where we are now isn’t about us or the architecture, it’s down to the commitment of the club to do something like this and fans will be the beneficiaries.”