Ex-Ferrari Formula 1 boss Maurizio Arrivabene has taken charge of Italian football giant Juventus.
A long-time senior employee of Ferrari’s main sponsor Philip Morris International, he was placed in charge of F1’s most famous team in 2015.
Arrivabene was seen by then-chairman Sergio Marchionne as someone who would be able to restore Ferrari’s political power in F1.
But Arrivabene left Ferrari in the winter of 2018/19, a few months after Marchionne’s death and after several errors led to a pair of failed title challenges in 2017 and 2018.
He was ousted in an overhaul that installed Mattia Binotto as team boss in a bid to end the team’s blame culture.
Arrivabene, who had limited public exposure as Ferrari’s leader relative to his counterparts at other teams, also suffered a deterioration in his relationship with the team’s star driver at the time, Sebastian Vettel.
Upon Arrivabene’s Ferrari exit he was immediately linked with a senior position at Juventus, having since 2012 been a board member of Italy’s most famous and successful football team.
Ferrari and Juventus have a fundamental common link in that Italy’s famous Agnelli family are owners of each through the company Exor NV, which has controlling shares in both.
Exor’s chairman and CEO is John Elkann, who succeeded Marchionne as Ferrari chairman in 2018 shortly and holds the role today.
Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli is Elkann’s cousin.
In his new role, Arrivabene is taking charge of “the football business area” at Juventus as part of a review into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the club, which estimates a €320m financial hit from 2019 to 2022.
The club’s directors have approved investment of up to €400m to address this impact.
Juventus was one of the architects behind the infamous European Super League proposal that rocked football earlier this year and drew widespread condemnation.
It was swiftly abandoned as several founding clubs withdrew in response to the backlash, although Juventus was one of three (along with Spanish clubs Real Madrid and Barcelona) that stood by the idea.
