Former River striker Maximiliano López, 38, was one step away from becoming the first Argentine to buy an English club by acquiring Birmingham City, a club that has played in the Second Division since 2011.
“I’ve been working on this for almost a year. It’s a great project, I see a lot of potential in the team. We believe we can do a great job at City, for our fans and for the team,” said López, who retired from football. in July of last year.
River’s own ex-soccer player (70 games, 16 goals) uploaded a video to his social networks in which he is seen on the Birmingham playing field, with the inscription “at home”.
However, the transaction between López and his partners must still be approved by the English Football League, which regulates the Championship -the English Second Division-, a tournament played by Birmingham after relegation in the 2010/2011 season.
“We exchanged contracts on Saturday after many months. We paid our deposit on Monday and now we are here today to find out how the club works and do our DD (due diligence). We will have to wait for EFL approval which may take two or three weeks. , and then we will continue,” explained the former attacker.
López and his main partner, Paul Richardson -owner of the Hera clothing brand- won the arm wrestling match against English businessman Laurence Bassini, who owned Watford between 2011 and 2012.
According to the portal The MirrorLópez and his partner paid a deposit of one and a half million pounds sterling (just over 1.8 million dollars) but the total cost would be almost 37 million pounds sterling to be paid over the next two years.
Birmingham City FC has 147 years of history in English football and its record highlights include the English League Cup titles in 1931 and 1956.
In its history, three renowned Argentines played:
- Alberto “Rabbit” Tarantini was bought from Boca in 1978 but lasted only one semester and then returned to Argentine soccer;
- Luciano Figueroa went from Rosario Central to Birmingham in 2003, but after six months he went free to Cruz Azul in Mexico;
- Mauro Zárate also spent just six months, on loan from Qatar’s Al Sadd in 2008, before being loaned to Lazio.
