Nicola Cortese speaks exclusively to the Daily Echo

Thus far things have gone pretty well.

His appointment of Alan Pardew as manager was well received and his coup of signing Rickie Lambert has given the club fresh impetus.

But, as he tells the Daily Echo’s chief sports writer Adam Leitch in an exclusive in depth interview, his challenges are only just beginning.

How are you settling into your new life in Southampton?
Me and family are trying to settle. My wife is looking into finding a property where hopefully we will spend a lot of our future.

What about your role at the football club?
As most people are aware my official start was August 1 but I was running the business since July 8. I am at a point now where I am starting to learn the business – I am a quick learner. I can already see some decisions we took right at the beginning which need to probably be revised. We are starting to control the business and make it more efficient.

Has it been a tough learning curve?
I am not completely inexperienced in this field so I had a good basis which helped me to understand the business quickly. There are still a lot things to learn about the corporate side because in England a few things work differently than back in Switzerland.

In terms of dealing with the football side, has anything taken you by surprise?
This interview we are doing now is something I have not been doing in the past. Working with the press etc is very important work and it is not something I would say surprised me but it’s something I’m not used to doing.

How odd is it to get used to your day to day business being talked about everywhere?
It means you had better get your decisions right from the beginning.

People are watching what you are doing and it’s not just an internal interest but
external with the people out there interested in what we do.

Your appointment of Alan Pardew was a big decision, how did you come to it?
Alan was on our list right from the beginning. I had some advice from people who are very experienced in English football. Once I had the conversation with Alan the first time I met him I was convinced he was the right man. He is the type of man to take us out from where we are and lead our football side.

What was it about him that made you feel that?
His honesty. He talked to me about things that I wouldn’t believe would come from many other team managers. Not many others would talk to you so openly about mistakes they made in the past. There was no doubt about his technical ability but you also look for somebody who works on a personal level because we work very closely. We start texting each other at 6am – I talk to him more often than my wife, I see him more often than I see my family. So this is a relationship which needs to be working out right from the beginning if you want to be successful.

Has it worked so far?
If I send him text messages at 6am he replies at 6.10am so it works. In any relationship there will be points where there is tension and disagreement and that will be the real test of it.

Have you had anything like that yet?
Yes we have come across one or two things. We have very good communication, we talk about issues and sometimes if something can’t work out I don’t just say it but I explain why it can’t work out. If you communicate on that level you shouldn’t have issues.

Football managers can be quite emotional and tend not to see a business side, but he seems quite level headed?
He is somebody who is used to working on budgets and has done well when he was at Reading and West Ham. He goes beyond a team manager who worries just about on the pitch but can see it as a business. So that makes it work a bit easier, especially when I need to explain why something can’t work.

I wonder if you think the fact you don’t come from a footballing background and he was a latecomer to the game and had a career before gives you both a sense of perspective that is often lacking in football?
I would think that it gives wide horizons because we have other experiences and that helps us. People always want things to be complete and in this business you face a lot of people who have been for all their life in football and they have a tunnel view – they don’t know what’s going on outside. Football does get you 100 per cent and I understand that, but I have experiences before, a remarkable career in banking, and that helps me keep a wider view on certain things. When I take decisions it is not purely what is in front of me but I look at the consequences and if it goes wrong how could we deal with it.

Has transfers and bringing players in been difficult for you?
It’s not actually been difficult. The biggest difficulty I face is when you are interested in a player and you call up from Southampton Football Club, you keep hearing chairmen, sporting directors, agents saying ‘you’re a big club, you shouldn’t be where you are, you could easily spend money.’ People need to get aware that all the investment we do in terms of players is in accordance to the league where we are.

As you probably realised in some of
the transfers that have been done, the circle is just between Alan and me so that’s why nothing goes out until it’s done and we keep it very limited to this circle. We discuss possibilities and then I get into negotiations.

How are the decisions made then? Does Alan come to you with a list of players?
We discuss a few times a day over the telephone and see each other every two days, we sit down, have a cup of tea and discuss what still needs to be
done on the team. He listens to my view, I listen to his view, and then we find some common ground and then we see and I’ll start investigating and find possibilities in signing a player. The ultimate decision on who comes in and goes out relies on me and my decision.

Does Markus Liebherr have any input on either transfers or in Alan’s appointment?
So far, no he doesn’t.

I take it then you are trying to run it as a self sufficient business, not to have to phone him up and ask him to wire some money?
A successful football team has to be a business, I am a believer in that. What I discuss with Markus is the financial aspect, budgets, and once I have his approval for that we just run. Decisions about the team are personal for me and on my judgement.

How many more signings would you like to see before the end of August?
It’s not a secret we have one or two positions we would like to strengthen. The plan is to have approximately two to three players.

Is that quickly or by the end of the month?
It all depends on when we decide ‘he is the person’. This is the biggest gap because it’s all internal but once that is decided it takes days. The signing of Rickie Lambert seemed a real statement of intent.

The players we want to get on board are players we believe can help us right now but also can help us in a higher league as well. Rickie is somebody we were looking at and the first time we spoke about him was two weeks ago and then we
decided later he was the man we really wanted to have. Once we made that intention to get him, we got him.

Alan has spoken about the possibility of Grzegorz Rasiak or Marek Saganowski leaving because they want to leave. Do you envisage that happening?
One of the experiences I’ve learned in this short period is that if a player wants to go, even if he’s got a contract, it’s hard to keep him.

You have agents who put ideas in their head that they can get much more salary etc. I can’t tell you now what’s going to happen because we had an offer for
one player which I declined so we will see what happens at the end of August.

Was the Stern John experience tough to take? Alan was very upset.
I should be upset too because Stern was having conversations with me.

The day before Alan was appointed I couldn’t say it to Stern but I had a conversation with him and told him to hang on for just a few more hours and we will appoint a manager and I am confident you will stay because
you are good for 20 goals. I couldn’t take that decision because I had to talk to the manager to see his view on the team and he was fine with that.
When Alan came in the plan was to keep him. We made him a decent offer, he was happy and suddenly his agent went missing and we know what happened. I gave him a deadline when they were away on this team break and I spoke to him again. He said again ‘I want to stay, I want to stay’ so I told him to get hold of his agent and told him to come back to us and say whether it’s enough money or not. The day after I get a call from the manager saying he walked off the pitch saying he’s going to the Championship.

Do you think you may have to get used to that in football?
This is something that was bound to happen and it just so happened I experienced it right at the beginning. The thing to learn is that it’s never done until it’s done.

Could you compare that experience to things that would have happened in banking or is this sort of thing unique to football?
I consider people ultimately to be egotists so if there’s another deal to go somewhere else, to get more money, it can happen – not just in football but in banking and elsewhere. The management structure at the club is something you were keen to get in place by the end of this month.

How is that progressing?
It’s progressing pretty well. When I came in we took some decisions and you have to understand that once Pinnacle had been given exclusivity we had given up. We thought it would not happen and three weeks later they will complete. We didn’t put in any effort for that because the exclusivity periodfor us would have been to do due diligence and at the same time look into the organisation etc. When we found out Pinnacle weren’t going to do it and we came back it still took another ten days of talks between me and Markus to get back into it. We were talking about the deal itself but not the organisation. Effectively we started this on July 8. There were decisions taken that very moment which were taken without knowing the organisation in detail which are going to be revised. Right now I understand the business, I know what is needed, I know what cost ratio we have to work on and have some more professionals join us. It’s an ongoing process – the organisation and working policies are all being implemented right now because before there was nothing like this left. We had a business that was at a standstill. We need people who are hard working. I believe success is not a coincidence, success is hard work. I expect everyone who is today and who will remain at Southampton Football Club and people who will join to be hard workers.

Will there be a formal board of directors who meet every so often?
I am not a believer in too many advisors. If you have that you’re bound to create a political environment and we are not here to do politics – we are
here to run a football club. There will probably be a type of advisory board who will advise us on technical and business aspects. It will be entirely non-executive and advisory.

Are you expecting to make appointments to that in the near future?
I am not in a rush for that but I am talking to people. This is not something that right now is essential at this stage but in the future there will be one announced.

Would you like to have somebody from outside the club who has a history in football in some way involved?
On the technical side, yes.

What has Markus made of it?
A lot of people will have seen him from afar and realised he is a lovely chap. He comes here and enjoys it. He feels people are grateful to him and every time people shake his hand and say ‘thank you’ and that means a lot to him. He just enjoys the atmosphere and
the welcome he receives every time he appears.

Is he in regular contact with you?
We have always been in regular contact before this experience so that is not going to change. I have now effectively become an employee of him but we are good friends and we trust each other – I trust in him if there is anything that needs to be done, I trust his judgement and his commitment.
He trusts me that we will do a good job here. He trusted me initially when I told him Southampton is something we should look into. The reaction
from the fans has been brilliant, approaching 12,000 season ticket sales.

Has that taken you by surprise?
If you would have said on July 8 we were going to sell  a  similar figure of season tickets to last year which is about 9,000 we would have been happy with that, so it’s great. What makes me happy is not just the renewals but we have a lot of new signings and this is what we want to do – we want to bring the club back to people who have turned their back over the last few years because of what was going on.

I think there was a break as
such between the club and the community and the business community and we want to bring that back. We are going to put more effort into that.
So far the big news is that we saved the club and people are grateful for that, but now we are on a positive wave which ultimately resulted in high season ticket sales. I am not all about season tickets, though.

I was happy to see in the first round of the League Cup an attendance of 11,000 people which was the highest of the whole round. That shows people were looking for change, they believe in the future and our ultimate goal is to respond to that.