Last year, on the occasion of Watford’s promotion to the Premier League, Gino Pozzo gave Troy Deeney a watch. Not just any watch either, a Rolex, which the club’s owner presented to the striker in acknowledgement of a great achievement: scoring 20 goals in three consecutive seasons.
“Since Troy did not get the trophy for player of the year from the Football League, I hope this compensates,” Pozzo told the club’s end-of-season dinner. “I have been a bit surprised by the lack of recognition for the hard work our guys have done this season. Since we don’t get the recognition from this league, I think we had better stay up.”
Pozzo might well find himself muttering the same words today. Watford are under investigation by the English Football League for the alleged use of a falsified document, relating to a letter allegedly supplied when Pozzo assumed full ownership of the club from his father, Giampaolo, in 2014. A guilty verdict would likely result in a fine. There is no indication the Pozzo family were aware of the letter.
Such a development is a rare bumpy moment in an otherwise serene journey up the football ladder for Watford since Pozzo Jr took over. Indeed, success has been a hallmark throughout the 51‑year‑old’s career, during which time he has carved himself a reputation as one of the most forward-thinking but also interventionist owners in football.
Often described as the brains of the Pozzo clan, and hailed by Udinese’s head of recruitment Andrea Carnevale as “the best owner in the world”, Gino graduated from Harvard before becoming involved in the Serie A club, the family’s first footballing purchase, in 1993. His time at the Friulani coincided with a decision to implement a meticulous global scouting system that soon became the envy of the world, unearthing players such as Alexis Sánchez, Medhi Benatia and Kwadwo Asamoah.
It was also the son who persuaded his father to expand the family’s football portfolio with the purchase of Granada in 2009. Then stuck in the third tier of Spanish football and burdened by debt, within three years under the Pozzos the club had made it to La Liga and profitability.
The same pattern has been evident during Gino’s time at Watford. His first season in sole charge brought promotion to the Premier League. Last term the club stayed up with ease and enjoyed a run to the FA Cup semi-finals. This year they sit in the top half of the Premier League table and have a win over Manchester United to their credit.
Pozzo is based in England, having relocated from Barcelona with his Catalan wife after his move from Granada. He works out of Watford’s Vicarage Road offices and their training ground that sits next door to Arsenal’s in the Hertfordshire countryside of Colney. This already sets him apart from many owners in the Premier League, but his day-to-day involvement in the club goes far deeper than just the location of his desk and he has been personally involved in decisions that have surprised many in football.
When Pozzo arrived at Watford he gave a rare interview in which he boasted that his family, contrary to Italian type, “always create stability around a manager”. In their promotion season, however, Watford went through four managers: Guiseppe Sannino, Óscar García, Billy McKinlay and Slavisa Jokanovic. García resigned because of illness but McKinlay was sacked by Pozzo after just eight days and Sannino left less than a month into the season after winning four of the club’s five league games. Rumours of discord in the dressing room abounded but there was a competing story; that Pozzo had struck after studying the training data and finding Watford’s players ran less than anyone at their sister clubs. More recently, Quique Sánchez Flores was removed this summer despite the club enjoying such a successful return to the top flight.
Then there are the transfers. Gino Pozzo takes personal charge of overseas player recruitment at Watford and on his arrival made clear that he thought recruitment should not be the preserve of a manager. “If you are looking at the long term, especially in a smaller club,” he told the Watford Observer, “you want to retain as much knowledge on how to recruit a player as possible. If you only give that to a manager, then once the manager leaves he leaves with all that knowledge. It is not the club’s knowledge.”
That the club, or rather the family, are in possession of a lot of knowledge is well-known and evident by their subsequent activity. In the first year of Pozzo family ownership in 2012-13 Watford brought in 14 loan players, several from the sister clubs, in an act that prompted the Football League to change its rules on loans the following summer. Inter-Pozzo transfers have continued over the years, including Odion Ighalo from Granada and, this summer, Isaac Success, who made a £12.5m transfer from the Spanish side at the same time as the club transferred ownership to a Chinese investment group.
There have been other deals which have seen players acquired by Watford and immediately loaned out to the continent, such as Venezuelan prodigy Adalberto Peñaranda, currently at Udinese, who has now been on the rosters of five different clubs at the ripe old age of 19.
Other business has been even more unusual, one such being the summer 2014 signing of Juanfran. The Spaniard was bought from Real Betis for a hardly earth-shattering £1.7m but was loaned out in the very same window to Deportivo La Coruña for two years. This summer, at the end of that deal, the Spanish club bought the defender for just under £3m.
Since their arrival in the UK the Pozzo family have managed to steer clear of the spotlight (Gino has given only three interviews to the media in four years). But with this week’s allegations that looks likely to change. Their model of ownership, however, looks very much set for the long term.