France Bleu Saint-Étienne Loire: A little more than 20 years after your arrival, you sold AS Saint-Étienne. What does that make you?
Bernard Caïazzo: I’m very, very happy about it. 20 years is a long time! We looked for a long time for the rare bird and we found it! That’s what was the most difficult. For me, moving up to Ligue 1 is great, but without adding big resources it seemed complicated. I have wonderful memories of the “Galtier” era (Editor’s note: Christophe Galtier, former ASSE coach) but football has changed a lot. Today there are large groups that have strong resources. But above all, it is the luck that we have, that we have people with a formidable human dimension.
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You are one of the architects of the takeover of ASSE. How was your contact with the big boss of Kilmer Sports, Larry Tanenbaum?
We met in October, he invited me to Toronto (Canada) to watch an NBA basketball game alongside him. We spent 24 hours together. I had an idea about billionaires, people who are a little cold. He turned out to be a great person. A warm person who loves people. I could see at the basketball stadium, 20,000 people, everyone greeted him, he responded with humility. Then we met again at his place, near Miami, for a whole day on his property. That day he said to me: “Listen to Bernard, The flow goes well between you and me, I trust you, I have seen that the people at the club are good people. We’re going to ask Ivan Gazidis to manage all that. I really like this Saint-Étienne club“. And he started watching, from January, all the Greens matches with the scarf!
And what do you think of Ivan Gazidis, who has been chosen to replace you as president of AS Saint-Étienne?
He is truly an exceptional person, with rare skills. I told him “you were at Arsenal, at AC Milan and now you are interested in ASSE?” He replied to me that he had refused offers from clubs equivalent to Arsenal or Milan but that he had chosen Saint-Étienne because he believes in them. On a human level, he told me immediately that he would keep all the collaborators, that they would work together.
The sales project quickly gained unanimous support within management? Particularly with your co-president Roland Romeyer?
Roland, he had a mission. We went down two years ago, it was terrible. We had to go back up. My own son, who has been more than a Greens ultra since the age of four, has the club logo tattooed on his chest. He takes a 14-hour bus ride to see an AS Saint-Étienne match in the second division. The evening of the descent, I saw my son crying all night. It’s hard for a father, I blamed myself a lot. That’s why I have a lot of respect for all these young Kops players. Today, football has become a religion. As long as the club did not return to Ligue 1, I had a pain in my chest. I can’t attend a Greens match, I had to take calming products to watch the play-off against Metz, because I have too much tension and stress about it. I am not the only one, I am sure that many supporters are in this situation and it puts my health at risk. So my approach is to take a long step back and tell myself “Roland is there, he does the job.” I intervene for the executive.
The fans haven’t always been kind to you. How did you experience it?
But it’s not big deal ! I don’t count. What matters is that they are happy with the club. I have no merit. My big mission was to say that if we hadn’t gone down two years ago, we would have gone down a little later. And if we move up and we are not able to have solid resources, well that means that at a given moment we are not sure of staying in Ligue 1. My mission was to say “Let this never happen again.” We need a strong club, with shareholders strong enough to cope and find the elite with progressive ambition. But it’s not enough. They must also have the values of the Greens, the values of the country. It’s very important and they have them.
So the sale of ASSE, for you, was not just a question of money?
It’s not just money, it’s heart. So I tell you the truth: financially, we are far from what was proposed by other potential buyers, but much less capable in my eyes of investing and developing the club. That’s the only thing that interested me. This famous “weaponization” of AS Saint-Étienne, but who would have imagined it? We had this victory in moving up to Ligue 1 and we also had the big victory with the arrival of the Kilmer Sports group. It’s a chance that all the other clubs that don’t have powerful shareholders will envy us.
