Everton takeover: Farhad Moshiri looks at Carlo Ancelotti’s prospects as fan groups look to the future after the Friedkin Group bought the Merseyside club.
Farhad Moshiri says the end of Everton’s ownership has left him with “mixed feelings” and he wonders where the club would have been if Carlo Ancelotti had remained at Goodison Park.
The British-Iranian businessman’s tenure in charge of the Toffees came to an end on Thursday when he sold his stake in the club to the Friedkin Group in a deal worth more than £400m.
The takeover has inspired Everton fan groups to look forward with “hope and optimism” after a particularly chaotic period under Mosihiri.
The club was beset by a difficult relationship with fans, managerial turmoil, relegation battles, boardroom collapse, Premier League points deductions and a financial crisis that pushed Everton to the brink.
In an open letter to supporters, Moshiri admitted a feeling of “sadness when reflecting on the past” after a “challenging” time on Merseyside, but said he was leaving the club “in a better place materially”. They have inherited it.
Moshiri wrote, “I fully understand that results on the pitch are paramount in football and in those same years they have clearly not been good.”
“We brought top-class managers like Carlo Ancelotti to the club and who knows where we would have been had he not been called back to his first love, Real Madrid.”
Moshiri said in the letter, external Leaving Everton an “iconic stadium for all Evertonians and the wider community to enjoy for decades and decades to come” was something he would be “real proud of”.
“When I bought the club eight years ago, I knew it needed to be modernized, with a new stadium and also a lot of investment on the training ground,” he said.
“I have borne the enormous cost of those improvements through my ownership, with season ticket prices remaining largely the same throughout my ownership period.
“I have tried to minimize the impact on fans by offering the most affordable tickets in the Premier League.”
