Joseph Portelli has €1.3m bid for Siena Calcio turned down by Italian club

Ħamrun Spartans president Joseph Portelli had a bid of €1.3 million to buy Siena Calcio turned down by the Italian Serie D club.

A report on the Gazzetta Di Siena said that the Italian Serie D club received an offer of €1.3 million by J.P. Portelli Group to take over the reins of the Italian team. However, the top officials of Siena Calcio turned down the offer.

Marcel Bonnici, the Chief Executive Officer, of J.P. Portelli Group, confirmed the story.

“Yes, I confirm that we made a bid for Siena Calcio but the offer was rejected by the Italian club,” he told the Times of Malta.

The report said that initially, J.P. Portelli Group had made an offer to take full control of the club for one million euros.

Successively, in a bid to try and soften the stance of the Siena Calcio owners, Portelli launched a second bid of €1.3 million.

The report said that the Maltese club could continue to negotiate with the Siena Calcio top administration and did not exclude a third bid of €1.5 million could be offered.

According to the report, Siena president, Jonas Bodin, a Swedish businessman, is not interested of selling the club but would be open to welcoming new partners.

Gazzetta Di Sicilia said that Portelli has presented a serious sporting project aimed at providing more financial stability to the club, and a sound technical programme for a club that has been passing through difficult times in recent years.

According to the report, Portelli is keen to invest in the club, particularly in the youth sector, to try and help Siena move up to higher divisions in Italian football. It is Portelli’s dream to lead an Italian club from the lower-tier divisions to the Italian Serie A.

Siena had won a historic promotion to the Serie A in season 2003-04 and remained in the top flight for four years.

The club won promotion to the Serie A in 2010-11 season but lost their status two years later.

In July 2014, the club were hit by financial problems and filed for bankruptcy and ended up playing in the fifth-tier Eccelenza and then the Italian Serie D.

Portelli had made no secret in the past few months that he was keen to invest in an Italian club and initially, he had revealed his dream of taking over Serie B side Sampdoria, who are passing through a difficult time, last September.

Asked about those prospects, Portelli told Times of Malta that buying Sampdoria would be a “dream”. 

Sampdoria, won the 1991 Serie A title and finished as European Cup runners-up in 1992.

The decorated side, however, is now facing financial trouble. 

“The truth is, as I always stated, that if God forbid, Sampdoria goes bankrupt, it would be the ambition of every president and investor to take over such a club. So if, God forbid, they go into administration, I would not even blink twice about it, even if they start in Serie D,” Portelli told Sports Desk in October.