ECHO Everton reporter Chris Beesley compares the way the Blues are run under Dan Friedkin compared to Roma
Everton's Hill Dickinson Stadium and (inset) Ryan and Dan Friedkin take part in the open top bus tour after Roma won the Conference League in 2022
Everton's Hill Dickinson Stadium and (inset) Ryan and Dan Friedkin take part in the open top bus tour after Roma won the Conference League in 2022
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A personal phone call from the owner to congratulate the coach on qualification to the Champions League – once again Roma’s experience under The Friedkin Group is in sharp contrast to Everton’s.
Back on March 22, Roma defeated Lecce 1-0. The previous evening, the Blues had blown away Chelsea 3-0 at what remains their most-emphatic display to date at Hill Dickinson Stadium.
At the time, both clubs were three points off a Champions League place in their respective divisions. But while Roma kicked on and qualified for the competition for the first time under TFG, Everton failed to win again all season and not only missed out on Europe completely but slumped to finish 13th in the table.
A report by Roma Press describes TFG’s jubilant reaction following Roma’s 2-0 victory at Hellas Verona in Sunday’s final game of the Serie A season to ensure they finished third in the table behind champions Inter and runners-up Napoli as Cesc Fabregas’ Como secured the last Champions League spot, meaning that heavyweights AC Milan and Juventus, with nine European Cups between them, both missed out.
The article states: “It’s a first for the Friedkins: Roma finally returns to the Champions League. The Giallorossi celebrated yesterday at Trigoria with all their staff present for one last match of the season, before leaving the training centre to unwind.
“This is something the various players, busy with their respective national teams at the World Cup, won’t be able to do. Roma is third in the standings for the first time since 2017-18, a masterpiece by Gian Piero Gasperini.
“The club remained united around him, and it paid off. That’s why Dan Friedkin’s call to the Giallorossi manager wasn’t a one-off.
“Dan Friedkin wanted to thank Gian Piero Gasperini. The Roma president, after Roma’s qualification for the Champions League, made a heartfelt gesture of relief towards the Grugliasco-born coach.
“As reported by Corriere dello Sport*,* the Giallorossi coach has received the owners’ embrace and is now thinking about the future.
“Ryan Friedkin has been planning his strategies from Trigoria and will be making decisions on various issues in the coming days, from contract renewals for expiring players to the selection of a new sporting director. Dan watches with satisfaction.”
As the piece says, the call from Friedkin senior to the coach: “wasn’t a one-off.” Whether it’s in good times or bad, the Houston-based billionaire is often on the blower to the Italian capital.
Last season, he reportedly sacked coach Ivan Juric by mobile phone after less than two months in charge following their 3-2 home defeat to Bologna, before the Croatian could even get back to the changing rooms. The decision, in November 2024, followed the dismissals of Jose Mourinho and Daniele De Rossi, leaving Roma to lure 73-year-old Claudio Ranieri out of retirement as their fourth boss of the calendar year.
It’s unclear just how many personal phone calls David Moyes gets from Dan Friedkin, but the ECHO understands that the Blues boss does not receive regular direct communication from him in contrast to his close relationship to late chairman Bill Kenwright during his first spell in charge. After all, the man who bought Everton from Farhad Moshiri over 18 months ago, still hasn’t turned up to watch them play, wherever in the world they have been.
Whether it’s been Goodison Park (including the historic final game after 133 years at the first purpose-built football ground in English football and venue for the most top flight matches); Hill Dickinson Stadium or the three games in the USA in the Premier League Summer Series, Friedkin has chosen to stay away. Last October, Dan and son Ryan, who did attend Everton’s inaugural first team game in front of fans at Hill Dickinson Stadium against Roma, took part in what has become something of an annual pilgrimage for them both at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.
Dan is an avid golfer who built the Congaree golf course in South Carolina and owns Diamond Creek Golf Club in North Carolina, and taking to the tee over three days at Carnoustie, Kingsbarns and St Andrews over the three-day event, he was less than 300 miles from Liverpool a mere 24 hours before Everton hosted Crystal Palace. Also, an accomplished pilot who personally flew former Blues striker Romelu Lukaku and the aforementioned Mourinho into the Eternal City when they each joined Roma, Friedkin could have made the journey in a private jet in less than an hour, while a helicopter ride, which other family members have used to touchdown on Nelson Dock next to Hill Dickinson Stadium on matchdays would have taken approximately 90 minutes.
Once the clubs were put away, the American did take to the skies, but it wasn’t to see Everton’s stirring 2-1 comeback victory over Crystal Palace to end the FA Cup holders’ 19-game unbeaten run as Jack Grealish netted the 52,769 capacity venue’s first stoppage time winner. Instead, Friedkin flew to Rome for the 32nd General Assembly of the European Club Association between October 7-9.
While there, he was photographed at Roma’s Centro Sportivo Fulvio Bernardini, shaking hands with player Stephan El Shaarawy and head coach Gian Piero Gasperini. It was a similar scenario the previous May when a beaming Friedkin was pictured giving dap at the same venue with goalkeeper Mile Svilar and chuckling away with Ranieri and sports director Florent Ghisolfi, who would quit that summer to join Sunderland and help mastermind the newly-promoted Wearside outfit’s European qualification under fellow Frenchman Regis Le Bris.
As senior Everton insiders have pointed out, there are representatives of TFG at every Everton game and running the club on a daily basis, so there is no actual requirement for Friedkin himself to be present. But the same man who saved Everton from potential financial disaster, sat with his son on the top deck of the bus when it paraded around the streets of the Italian capital after Roma’s Conference League triumph in 2022.
He also oversaw the Blues’ largest ever net spend in a single transfer window, but given that they were going into a summer where 15 of their players, including loanees, were going to be out of contract, but has that been enough? Such outlays have been dwarfed by many of their rivals, including the Black Cats who leapfrogged them in the penultimate weekend of the campaign and ultimately ended up in the Europa League after defeating Chelsea on the final day.
Roma were kicking on in the January transfer window, snapping up Aston Villa’s Donyell Malen – who netted the opener in the 2-0 win at Hellas Verona to clinch Champions League qualification – on loan with an obligation to buy and teenage striker Robinio Vaz from Marseille for what will be a combined outlay of €50million. Meanwhile, Everton were replacing Grealish, the first £100million English footballer with another loanee in the shape of Chelsea youngster Tyrique George.
As the deadline approached, Blues boss Moyes, who has been playing Jake O’Brien out of position for 18 months because like predecessors Sean Dyche and Frank Lampard, he doesn’t fancy Nathan Patterson, the £11million acquisition Rafael Benitez brought in just 12 days before the former Kop Idol was sacked, admitted the club had: “been actively looking for a right-back for over a year.” Kenny Tete who chose to sign a new deal at Fulham last summer rather than join Everton on a free transfer can’t have been the only viable option.
Yet, following the Blues end-of-season collapse it’s now the Glaswegian gaffer, who steered the club to nine top-eight finishes, including their highest Premier League position of fourth and solitary dalliance with the Champions League in 2005, who is left getting it in the neck from many among a largely disenchanted and understandably disappointed fanbase.
As this correspondent has previously observed, as super-rich businessmen go, Friedkin appears to be one of the good guys. He is chair of Project Recover, which uses modern technology to repatriate US Second World War soldiers missing in action in the Pacific Ocean while there is also the Friedkin Conservation Fund, which protects millions of acres of endangered wildlife areas and stimulates community development in East Africa.
Showing up on matchdays alone is not the benchmark for judging a good owner. Just look at the way that the Everton’s previous prospective buyers, the now collapsed 777 Partners enthusiastically infiltrated the Goodison Park directors’ box in their baseball caps during their protracted and ultimately unsuccessful attempts to be given the green light for a takeover.
Also, the memories of Moshiri – the billionaire accountant who led the Blues to an unprecedented brace of points deductions for losing too much money – and his meddling in football affairs, remain fresh. However, in his final ECHO column of the season, Michael Ball said: “My big question to Dan Friedkin, the owner at Everton is: ‘what are you going to do in the summer?’
The former Blues defender added that he felt the club had: “failed in the transfer market.”
After being saved from football oblivion by the Friedkins, loyal but long-suffering Evertonians thought this would be a ‘Cinderella story.’ However, right now, they’re still waiting to go to the ball, and like Cinders herself, they feel somewhat like the poor relations, while those at the top appear to focus on their sister club.