Sports

Giants and Jets looking to buy Italian soccer team AS Roma: report

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Giants owners Steve Tisch and John Mara have teamed up with Jets owner Woody Johnson and are kicking around a plan to buy a controlling stake in Italian soccer team AS Roma.

The trio reportedly made an offer recently to buy the beleaguered team nearly three years after George Soros and New York lawyer Joe Tacopina put in an unsuccessful bid to buy the club, the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto reported today.

The newspaper reported that the dollar amount has not been made public as both sides try to hammer out a deal.

The Giants and Jets are co-owners of the New Meadowlands Stadium, which opened last year, and both teams worked together last year to bring Super Bowl XLVIII to the stadium in 2014.

Both the Jets and Giants have denied they are in talks to buy the team.

One of Italy’s most popular teams, Roma is currently in fifth place in the 20-team Serie A standings and features former Italy striker Francesco Totti and Brazilian forward Adriano.

In 2009, Forbes magazine estimated the value of the team at $308 million.

AS Roma, which was founded in 1927, has won the Serie A title three times in its history, most recently in 2001.

Italian group Italpetroli holds a controlling stake in AS Roma, but creditor UniCredit de facto controls the group.

Russian media had reported in September that LUKOIL Vice President Leonid Fedun was interested in purchasing a controlling stake, but the company had no comment at the time.

Italian pharmaceutical magnate Francesco Angelini never put forward concrete plans for a takeover bid after saying he wanted to buy a majority stake in the club.

The club — known in Italy simply as Roma — has been seeking an outside buyer since last summer.

Unlike England’s Premier League, where American ownership of major teams has become common, Italy’s pro squads are owned by Italians, so the purchase by Tisch, Mara and Johnson would be the first of its kind.

The team plays its games at the Olympic Stadium, opened in 1930 and rehabbed for the 1990 World Cup, and like the Jets and Giants, shares the 73,000-seat venue with city rivals SS Lazio.

AS Roma club officials have said that they are interested in building a stadium and that new owners would have to commit to such a plan should a takeover occur.

In October, the Boston Red Sox, owned by by New England Sports Ventures, purchased English club Liverpool for $476 million — the latest move by an American company to buy a soccer team in Europe.

With Reuters