SOUTHAMPTON HAVE ENTERED into a partnership with Chinese businessman Gao Jisheng, the Premier League club’s owner Katharina Liebherr announced on Monday.
“I am pleased to confirm that talks to bring in a new partner to our club have been concluded,” said Liebherr in an open letter to supporters on the club website.
“Following extensive and fruitful work, we are entering into a partnership with the Gao family and I am excited about what we will achieve together.”
Southampton did not divulge the terms of the partnership, but British press reports said Gao and his family had paid £200 million (€220.3 million) to acquire an 80% stake in the club.
Liebherr inherited Southampton from her late father, Markus, in 2010.
Gao’s company, Landers Sports Development, said it had agreed a deal to buy into Southampton in January, but the new partnership is a personal investment.
“I am honoured and humbled to become a partner of Southampton Football Club alongside Katharina Liebherr, who, together with her father, has been such a great steward of the club, its growth and success,” said Gao.
Together, we have the passion and motivation to build on Southampton’s excellent progress in recent years as we look forward to an exciting next chapter for the club.”
Liebherr said she and Gao had “full trust” in chairman Ralph Krueger and his management team and would support their plans “to follow the Southampton Way”.
Southampton are the third Premier League club to have attracted investment from China after Manchester City and West Bromwich Albion.
The south-coast club were in England’s third tier as recently as 2011, but they have been in the top flight since 2012 and reached last season’s League Cup final.
Their feted youth academy launched the careers of players including club great Matt Le Tissier, Arsenal pair Theo Walcott and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Real Madrid star Gareth Bale.
Now managed by Argentinian Mauricio Pellegrino, Southampton opened their 2017-18 campaign by drawing 0-0 at home to Swansea City on Saturday.
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That’s a huge blow to United’s europa league hopes
Yeah focus on the negative about Jose instead of the match result and performance typical.
@Paul: yeah, not one positive adjective about United’s performance in the whole article.
Bizarre that Mourinho was booed by the Chelsea fans. I missed portions of the match so might be missing something…
@James Clancy: it’s Chelsea fans, what do you expect?!!
@James Clancy: United fans will boo him yet. It’s his scorched earth departures that cause it really.
@Brian Curtin: small club Chelsea
Chelsea are a skummy club for the way they taunted Mourinho like that.would not expect anything more from the Chelsea blues Brothers supporters club.
They should have let him go. I doubt he’d be able to punch his way out of a paper bag and could do with a good slap.
He was actually heading to the exit before the final whistle only the stewards made him stay till the end
that was a real ‘hold me back…please hold me back’ he’d have had his arse handed to him if he’d got near that guy
Good result for city
Great crack!