Manchester United's controlling co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has been hit by the news that Nice's sporting director has requested to leave the club.
Ratcliffe bought the Ligue 1 side in 2019 through his INEOS chemical company, but he has struggled to bring success to the Allianz Riviera. Last season, they finished ninth despite bringing in the likes of Kasper Schemichel and Aaron Rasmey.
After that recruitment proved to be a mistakes, Ratcliffe brought in Florent Ghisolfi as sporting director. They have enjoyed a more successful campaign this term and sit fifth in the French top-flight, enough to qualify for the Europa League.
But while Nice appear to be on a positive trajectory, Ghisolfi is now looking to depart. It is a bitter blow for Ratcliffe, who has only just been able to bring Jason Wilcox to United as technical director, with Dan Ashworth set to be become the Red Devils' sporting director.
According to FootMercato, Ghisolfi has decided to leave Nice in order to join Roma. He has only been with Nice since October 2022, following a successful stint at Lens.
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But Ghisolfi is keen to move to Italy and has already informed Nice chiefs of his decision to leave. The 39-year-old is said to believe that the project that was set out for him when he first arrived at Nice has changed.
He will now have to make 'arrangements' to facilitate his exit with Ineos, with Roma having been 'seduced' by his work in recent years. Ratcliffe has faced criticism for his failure to find success at Nice, with Arsenal icon Emmanuel Petit launching a scathing rebuke of him last May.
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Florent Ghisolfi has requested to leave his job as sporting director at Nice, a club Ratcliffe also owns (Hugo Pfeiffer/Icon Sport)Petit told Foot01: "Since INEOS arrived in Nice, I don’t know who makes the decisions. I don't know where they want to go. I don’t know what they want to do with this club, especially since with Manchester United behind us we don’t know if they’re going to pull out overnight.
"That's what puzzles me, actually. A group like INEOS, which manages 17,000 people around the world and has a turnover of 80bn, is not even capable of managing a club like Nice at the moment and having a clear and defined strategy.
"When you take the best sporting director, Ghisolfi at Lens, who made miracles on the transfer market with three francs and six pennies. You see today that he is in total disagreement with what we are trying to impose on him concerning the extension of certain players like Ramsey.
"Who is making the decisions? Mr. Ratcliffe, Mr. Blanc, Mr. Rivère, whose silence has been deafening for the past few weeks regarding the affairs. He told us in February: 'You’ll see, we’ll give you the name of the future coach in February.'
"It’s the end of May and we still don’t know what’s going to happen at Nice with the market coming up quickly. The direction that INEOS and OGC Nice want to take, I have no idea!"
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