‘I want this to be fun’: new Athlone Town chairman

New chairman and self-described 'controlling member' of Athlone Town AFC, American businessman Nick Giannotti has asked fans to come behind the club as he outlined his plans for the future.

In a message to supporters, he said: “I appreciate their patience. I can empathise and sympathise with their distrust. I think that those who have already met me and seen me have seen that I'm not a robot. I'm not coming in to take something away from their community.”

He added that success required everyone around the club and community to be involved.

“I want this to be fun, not just for me, but for everybody... I look forward to the long term and hopefully everyone has patience and is excited about the future.”

In an interview with the Westmeath Independent Giannotti was keen to set out his ambitions.

“I see a football club that is successful. I want to see the ladies team as perennial powerhouse in Ireland. I want to see us lift the women's game, not just in Ireland, but around the world.”

On the men's team, he said: “I see us making vast changes, sweeping changes next season.”

“Ian Ryan has been great in holding down the fort and trying to do as much as he could in dealing with the hand we've been dealt in this transition. And so, I see us being very, very competitive in the next season, the next three seasons and the next five.”

He also outlined his intention to increase revenues around the club.

“The only way for us to be successful is to have sustainable revenues to be able to compete.”

In specific terms, he cited plans to redevelop the club's grass pitch at the rear of the stadium to an astroturf facility, and to the possibility of hosting events, such as concerts, or boxing matches.

“I don't know if at some point down the road, having a a pub or a a gathering place for people makes sense,” he added.

He said he accepts he has work to do to strengthen the connections between the club and community, and cited the whole Champions League experience of the women's team as a first step in that process

Pointing to the appointment of Steven Gray as CEO, he said he hoped it was seen as a sign of intent of his willingness to invest locally.

Giannotti is a 45-year-old, who was a banker, and has been involved in solar businesses for the past 15 years, currently leading Redball Energy, a company he co-founded.

Raised in San Diego, California, he was an avid footballer in his youth, and described the sport as “a lifelong passion”.

It was in the unlikely surrounds of England's Devon coastline that he first became aware of Athlone Town AFC.

Giannotti is also a director and minority shareholder at Plymouth Argyle, and in the immediate afterglow of the club's famous fourth round FA Cup win over Liverpool last season he was approached by Eric Perez.

Perez is the Canadian owner of Truro City, a Cornwall-based football club, which last year won the National League South division, and now plays in the National League, one tier below the English Football League.

Perez mentioned Athlone and Giannotti was intrigued enough to carry out “a deep dive”, and then to follow up with a visit to the town in early May.

As fate would have it, his arrival coincided with the unseasonably warm spell of late spring/early summer weather. “The weather was perfect the entire time. It was funny, so many people will tell me that that's not Ireland and so from that type of perspective, it felt like I was being drawn to it,” he said.

He said the fact the women's side were league champions and in the Champions League qualifiers also excited him.

Athlone's central location and easy access from Dublin, the fact that Giannotti frequently travels from the United States to Plymouth via Dublin, and the prospect of taking on the project of the men's team, despite its many challenges, were all contributory factors that piqued his interest.

“So there's lots of things that intrigued me about Athlone. The business community seems like it's a very vast and robust community as well. I just think that when you've got a club, a community asset, that really is kind of dormant and sleeping, yet it's still there, really makes for an interesting opportunity. And I like I like opportunities. I like challenges.”

Giannotti currently has involvement in some capacity with six football clubs; as well as Athlone Town and Plymouth Argyle, these are Larne FC, two in Italy and one in Portugal.

Pointing out that the only two clubs he controls are Athlone and Larne, he baulks at the description of “a multi-club model”, preferring instead to offer the concept of a footballing eco-system.

“I wouldn't necessarily call it a multi-club model. Nobody else within that network of clubs have said that they want to be a part of a multi-club model.

“I call it an ecosystem more than anything and that ecosystem allows us to still look at players and how they can be moved and how they can develop, how they can have different opportunities.”

When Athlone Town introduced Giannotti, with a statement on its website in July, it was unclear to many whether there had been an investment or a takeover of the club.

He was described as the club chairman and of taking “on the responsibility of leading this historic club into its next chapter”.

On the question of the nature of his involvement, Giannotti described himself as “a controlling member and chairman of the club”.

“That's how I would at the moment describe how it is,” he said.

The club is operated as a company limited by guarantee (CLG), and Giannotti said, from a legal perspective there is no owner of a CLG. He described the CLG as “a work in progress”.

In relation to the club itself, he said Michael O'Connor is “not involved in anything day-to-day anymore, he is not involved in decision making”.

Former chairman John Hayden, remains involved, according to Giannotti, as he is helping with a number of infrastructure projects that Giannotti had asked him to complete as he (Hayden) knows the grant process.

“He is not going to stay on long term, it's more of an immediate, short-term thing,” Giannotti said, also stating that former club secretary David Dully is not involved other than helping navigate through the transition process.

Asked about his relationship to the stadium property, Giannotti said, referencing a series of High Court hearings over the stadium, “I think it's pretty clear about the stadium in the courts.”

He went on to state: “It's not controlled by a private individual i.e. Nick Giannotti.”

“If people in the community wonder about my intentions, I'm not some real estate tycoon that's coming in there to take a community asset away from them. In fact, I want to grow it and make it a stronger pillar within the community. My intentions are to make it a better place and more welcoming place for people to go," he said.

“I see huge opportunity for making the grounds great,” he continued, before outlining work he had carried out both on upkeep and improvements.

“People have choices of where they go and where they spend their money. And so they want to go to a clean, safe, fun environment. I think if you go by the ground today, you'll notice that there's been a big improvement to clean it up. We moved the TV gantry to the other side. I'm not investing €25,000 into a TV gantry if I'm looking to do something differently with that ground.”

Throughout our conversation, Giannotti constantly refers back to community, and when asked what motivates him in his business life, he reinforces the point.

“I love communities. I love people. I love being involved in things,” he says, referencing Campobasso, an Italian club which currently plays in Serie C, the third tier of Italian football.

“I was asked to support the club by the current president and major shareholder because that's where my father's from in Italy. I wanted to support the community where my father's from, so if I can do that in the ecosystem of football, that's fantastic.”