In The Sunday Times today. Looks there is definitely going to be outgoings, and he seems determined to understand the club more than Heck did, which must by why Nas and Wes got rid of him.
How can Villa crack the elite? This man thinks he has the answers
Francesco Calvo won't share opinions about how team is playing but wants to give club 'ammunition' to challenge at top in his off-the-pitch business role
Jonathan Northcroft
A soft but dogged rain is falling at Bodymoor Heath but Francesco Calvo eschews an umbrella. He's giving a tour of the latest improvements to Aston Villa's training ground and his fine, Italian suit and shoes are getting wet.
But no matter. The last thing he wants to be seen as is “Calvo the foreigner” and he's immersing himself in it all: the club, Birmingham and its people and — now literally — the English weather.
He's good company, Aston Villa's president of business operations, newly arrived from Juventus, having also driven revenue at Barcelona and Roma and worked in Formula 1. Certain Calvo says he wants the club to run so smoothly that “nobody will realise I'm here” executives get giddy working in the Premier League and there was one who liked to bustle about in a training top bearing his initials, yet with Calvo, 48, there's no pretence.
Was he much of a footballer in younger years? “Never,” he says laughing. “I was such a disaster that I still don't know if I'm left or right-footed. I'm uncomfortable with both legs. My father [a Turin surgeon] wasn't a football fan, so I never played and I supported Juventus but I was a 'cold fan' in the sense their result never changed my mood on Monday morning.
“After so many years working in football, of course, I'm passionate about it. But I know my limits. You will never hear me give an opinion about a player, a match, or how we're playing.”
He spent last season sitting next to Giorgio Chiellini at Juventus games. Calvo was Juve's managing director of revenue, and was mentoring the great former defender, who wants an executive career. Watching matches unfold “I realised Chiellini sees things happening three seconds before. And I see them three seconds after they have happened.
“So, it's a different sport,” Calvo laughs.
He describes Monchi, the president of football operations and Villa's recruitment guru, as “a genius” and says “in a world of football where people generally are pretty nervous because everything is self-driven, Monchi is a calm person, which I like”. Unai Emery, the head coach, is “our real added-value because he allows us to over-perform our budget”.
Calvo and Monchi's roles? “The club relies, thankfully, a lot on Unai but then we need to provide him the right team every year and right ammunition to fight the others.” remit is to try to close the gap on the biggest clubs, off the pitch, the way Emery has managed to on it. Quite a task. In the 2025 Deloitte Money League the smallest “big six” club is Chelsea, tenth in Europe, with £475million in revenue, while Villa are 18th with a revenue of £270million. “The owners have been and are still investing a lot,” Calvo says. “They invested £50million to renew the hospitality of Villa Park and now there is an expansion project to increase the dimension of the stadium [to 50,000 capacity, up from 42,000] but commercially we sit behind the big six and I don't know if we'll ever be able to fill the gap.
“But we have to work really hard to understand the opportunities. Birmingham is the second biggest city of the UK and I need to understand what Villa really represents here and in the Midlands, and understand the business community and if there are opportunities or not. For us the best opportunity at the moment is working harder than the others and to try to be more creative than the others.
“No one has asked me for a revolution; the ownership haven't asked to be the No1 club in the Premier League. They know it takes time.”
In many ways Villa feel a test case. How they go over the next few seasons will tell us whether it truly is still possible to build a top club organically, or whether money has polarised the game to such an extent that it's simply impossible (without the sovereign wealth of a Newcastle) to live with England's “big six” — Manchester City, Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur — and, beyond them, Europe's elite.
In the way are the regulations. In January, with Villa on course for Champions League knockout football and challenging for a top-five place in the Premier League, owners Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens — as they have been doing since their 2018 takeover — supported their football department. Three permanent signings, including Donyell Malen, arrived for transfer fees in excess of £30million and Marcus Rashford, Marco Asensio and Axel Disasi were recruited on expensive loan deals.
Narrowly and controversially — yes, the refereeing in their final league game at Old Trafford — Villa missed out on a 2025-26 Champions League spot and, deprived of the £50million-plus revenue that would have guaranteed, they must now cut the playing budget by about £80million to meet the Premier League Profitability and Sustainability Rules and adhere to Uefa's own financial regulations.
That's the modern game's Catch-22. Without spending, you hit a ceiling — but if you try to break through it and don't immediately succeed, the rules push you further down: for missing Uefa financial targets Villa were fined £9.5million in June and agreed a settlement for which they are committed to reducing losses over a three-year period. Selling talent seems inevitable.
“The rules of football are a concern. A limiter,” Calvo admits. “There are limits to how much the owners can invest, which then [improves] performance on the pitch, which drives revenues. Though I do believe, with the performance we have already, we have room to grow revenues.
“On one side, football was a disaster in terms of losses until a few years ago and the situation has been improving thanks to the rules. However, on the other, the rules create a limit to invest to compete at the highest level.
“So it's kind of restricting competition. There are the usual suspects competing in every country and let's say that's an element of concern for us.” He admits that in the remaining days of the transfer window, which closes on September 1, “we clearly need to sell and to buy players” — and that in terms of new signings, “we need to be careful because we need to comply with regulations”.
And yet he is still buoyant. “Investing [in transfers] is not always synonymous with succeeding,” he notes, “and our approach will be to work harder and smarter than anyone else. Harder is easy, smarter no.” He cites Atalanta who, without spending on the scale of Juventus, Napoli or the Milan and Rome clubs, have become regular fixtures in Serie A's top five.
“What Wes and Nassef have done in six years is incredible,” Calvo says. “They are extremely ambitious and extremely disciplined. Now, we've been losing money because we've been investing a lot. And now they are fully aware we're entering a different phase where we need to comply with regulations, we have certain constraints, but the ambition doesn't stop.”
The building works at Bodymoor are evidence of the drive to keep growing.
Under construction are sleeping quarters for players so the squad can stay overnight after returning from European games, and Calvo cheerfully shows the Portakabin he works from — non-football staff are being relocated here in an effort to bring the whole club together, and there will be permanent offices in time.
Is stadium naming rights on the agenda? “It hasn't been a top priority up to now. We know Villa Park is a historical name and we cannot change the name. That's a given. But [an alternative] is something we can look at, absolutely, in time.”
Other sponsorship deals are more likely in the
short-term. “We have the training ground, the training kit. We have the jersey coming up next year, so we have a lot of inventory and we focus on that.”
He anticipates doing a lot of travelling in his role and sees opportunities to grow Villa's brand abroad but is mindful: “In the end we are from Birmingham, we are an English club, we represent the history of English football and if I look at our revenues then our beautiful stadium is here, our TV subscribers are here.”
With sensitive issues such as ticket pricing, “it's important to think with two hearts. The heart of the club, because we need to drive the club forward, but also the heart of the fans. What do they want. They are not consumers — they're fans.”
He has been reading Waking the Giant: Inside the Rebirth of Aston Villa by Gregg Evans and Matt Maher and visited Birmingham's famous central shopping area, the Bull Ring, and — despite only arriving in July — already rents an apartment on the edge of the city.
What has he learnt about his new club? “That it is deeply rooted within the community.” And something else: “I did an analysis, very basic, of the representation of clubs within the Premier League. Advisory groups, subcommittees, FA committees — there are 60 positions, 20 clubs. Easy maths. There are three clubs who do not have any sort of representation at all. Aston Villa is one.
“That was a surprise because if I look at Aston Villa, we're one of the founding members of the Premier League, have a very rich history and we represent the city of Birmingham — so we should play a role within English football, an important role. If we have ideas — and our ownership has ideas, our management as well — we should be active.”
A veteran of the European Club Association, Serie A and Italian FA committees, expect Calvo to be a presence at Premier League meetings and give Villa a louder voice in football politics. “In the end, if you are not on the tables where things are decided and you are passive, you cannot complain,” he says.
He instigated a town hall meeting where he, Monchi and de facto sporting director Damian Vidagany explained their vision to the club's ordinary staff. He told the story of John F Kennedy visiting Nasa in 1962 and asking a janitor “what do you do?” The guy replied: “I'm here to help put a man on the moon.”
“Here it's the same,” Calvo says. “In the end we all play football. Everything we do here is to support the football side.”
His ambition is to be like a good referee. Someone necessary, who facilitates, but does it so well you don't even know they are there. “Let's say, in the future, the club is moving so smoothly to a different level and is challenging [the elite] on and off the pitch so constantly that nobody will realise I'm here. That I'm so embedded in the club that 'Calvo the foreigner' doesn't exist,” he says.
“That's the ambition. Football is often a one-man show which is something I really dislike. Now, when I speak I have that crest and the lion behind me. Without it I'm nothing.”
