On a beautiful Saturday in 2019, something amazing happened. At the Maracana, the Fluminense team was losing by a single point to Cruzeiro in the Copa do Brasil. There were only a few precious minutes left in the match. That’s when Joao Pedro took the opportunity to score the tying goal. Even though he was only 17-years-old at the time, and he hadn’t actually played a senior game yet, he was already making a big impression on the sports world – so much so that he had already signed for Watford to that point.
Indeed, Joao Pedro was just another in a long line of unforgettable players that were discovered by Gino Pozzo.
An Undeniable Approach, Unforgettable Results
For those unfamiliar, Gino Pozzo is an Italian businessman who was born in 1965. After venturing to the United States to attend Harvard University, he soon returned to Italy and began to build a career around talent scouting. He’d always loved football and dreamed of helping to develop the type of high potential players that fans couldn’t help but talk about all over the world.
One team that has always been of particular interest to him was the Watford Football Club. It was in 2012 that it was first reported the club had been sold to Gino Pozzo and his father. It has been widely reported that the younger Pozzo has been “heavily involved” with the day-to-day operation sofa the club ever since.
That Saturday in 2019 was also notable because Watford was playing in its first FA Cup final in over three decades. It was something that fans everywhere were celebrating, as they all saw it as a long time coming. It has been stated that many fans see Gino Pozzo as something of a savior, especially when you consider the condition the team was in when he and his father took over in 2012.
Not only was the Pozzo family able to rescue Watford from the dregs of obscurity, but they were also able to help them develop into a legitimate force to be reckoned with. At this point, you’d be hard-pressed to find fans out there who aren’t majorly grateful for that.
Watford’s success is the product of Gino Pozzo and his three-man leadership group. Decisions are made by not only himself but also technical director Filippo Giraldi and a business manager named Scott Duxbury. All three of them are intimately involved in all key decisions. This includes not only the identification of players, but of managers as well.
Almost more than an owner, Gino Pozzo has been called a supporting director for the club. He decides everything, he is surrounded by people he trusts, and he is nothing if not a perfectionist. He has been described as honest, demanding, and as an individual who does not want to waste time. He tries to react not to where things currently are, but where he thinks they might be headed. Given all that has occurred in Watford over the years, it’s safe to say that this has all worked out well for him so far.
In addition to helping usher in a new era of glory for Watford, Gino Pozzo also runs an international scouting team. It has between 25 and 30 people on it at any given moment and, among them, they attend “every significant competition” around the world. They’re especially focused on markets like South America, Eastern Europe, and others.
As another sign of his forward-thinking strategy, Gino Pozzo is said to regularly invest smaller sums of money in high risk players. In addition to helping minimize acquisition costs, this also pays off significantly as those players continue to develop and hone their skills. The aforementioned Joao Pedro is just one example of that – rest assured that there are many more.
The world has changed a lot since Joao Pedro scored that precious goal in May 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic began to sweep its way around the world and much of society locked down. Sports of all times came to a halt. Vaccines began to roll out. But despite everything that has happened, one thing has remained the same:
Gino Pozzo is just as dedicated to his precious football club as he ever was, if not more so. When you consider how far both he and the team have come in a relatively short amount of time, it’s truly exciting to think about what the next few years (and beyond) will have in store.
Read more new on Gino Pozzo here: https://aboutmanchester.co.uk/gino-pozzo-continues-his-quest-to-grow-the-watford-football-club-an-overview/
“Entrepreneur. Freelance introvert. Creator. Passionate reader. Certified beer ninja. Food nerd.”
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