Statement from Claudio Fenucci

The director of the Corriere dello Sport-Stadio in an article published today on the front page gave us a tough moral lesson. He maintained that Joey Saputo is somebody who “betrays without betraying”, who “has never sought direct dialogue” with Mihajlovic, and who “didn’t even find the time to give the coach a brief telephone call with the head coach” after this recovery. More generally, he claimed that the club’s directors have, over the years, presented the president with ‘parallel realities’ and that ‘no one at the club has taken responsibility for protecting the coach’. This series of failings has led our censor to lament the lack of ‘respect, gratitude’, ‘humanity’ and to acknowledge the ‘decency of men’.

It is very difficult to respond seriously to such nonsense, exploitation and pettiness. The whole world of sport, three years ago, complimented our Club for the sensitivity and humanity, which were shown while our coach suffered from a terrible illness. Mihajlovic himself, on numerous occasions, thanked the president and the Club for their support, which was never lacking. The passage on the apparent failure to call the coach during his recovery – which obviously happened via video call – is the low point of the piece because it is a gross invasion of privacy. I, in my capacity as the Club’s Sporting Director, am in daily contact with the coach. Now, it would also be easy for me to repay the journalist in kind and make public his phone calls and private messages (these are real, by the way), but I do not lack such basic human decency

The truth is that this ungainly intervention is nothing short of an embarrassment. It makes me laugh to receive moral lectures from the only journalist, who, three years ago, did not respect Mihajlovic’s request to not publish the news of his illness ahead of time. Where was the decency there?

Claudio Fenucci