Vangelis Marinakis spoke to “Daily Mail” on the occasion of Nottingham Forest’s first win in this year’s Premier League.
“Yes, (s.s. things are more balanced) because everyone involved in the club has a year of experience and of course in the beginning we all make mistakes.
Premier League experience is very important and this club is a huge club, but for a long time, since the year he was born my son Miltiadesthat is, since 1999, where he did not play in the Premier League.
This club with its popularity and fans, previous achievements in the Champions League should be as high as possible.
For me it was a challenge, this is a team that I remember from when I first came to study in England. They were doing really well and outperforming Liverpool, they were a very popular club and I liked them.
A few years later I bought this club and I want it to be established in the Premier League, we have spent a lot on our training centre, our stadium, we have permission for improvement works on our stadium and property development in the area. Every year we improve and the dream is to see Nottingham in the top 10 of the Premier League“, he added.
He then referred to Saudi Arabia, which has entered the transfer market very dynamically. “It’s getting harder and harder, also this year we saw that Saudi Arabia are targeting players who are not 35 or 36 but are young good players and the offers they get are five, six, seven times what they are in the Premier League . We also have financial Fair Play to be aware of. All this creates great concern not only for us but for all clubs».
At the same time, he also referred to the problems of Greek football. “It’s no secret that the federation is a problem at the moment. We have a federation that is unable to cope with the current challenges.
There are people who have nothing to do with professional football and this is a very big problem, which also creates violence and various problems in Greek football. It is a problem for us who have invested a lot in players, infrastructure, stadiums, training grounds and we work a lot to improve and promote football.
Two years ago there was an agreement between the prime minister and the president of UEFA and they signed a memorandum on Greek football. This emphasizes that we must have a professional referee body and it was my proposal because I am also the president of the Greek Super League, to copy the Premier League model with professional referees“, he pointed out and added: “It is something that works very well in England and what we have said is to copy exactly the same. Portugal has done it successfully and you can see how successful it is. You can see that Portugal is an example because also the money in the budget is limited, but they perform better.
We need to do that and also have a professional on the committee to decide the future of professional football. Instead of doing that, the committee has a minority vote and in any case it makes no sense».
Source: Sport Fm
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