AS Monaco: Key takeaways from Prince Albert II's interview on RMC

Prince Albert II was invited on the “Rothen s’enflamme” programme on RMC on Monday 11th October. This was an opportunity for the Sovereign, a big supporter of AS Monaco and always present in the stands, to talk about the management of the club on the Rock.

The Principality has no plans to increase its shares in the club

It will soon be ten years since Dmitry Rybolovlev became the majority shareholder of AS Monaco. Since December 2011, the Russian businessman has held 66.67% of the shares, leaving 33.33% to the Monegasque government. A distribution fully accepted by Prince Albert II.

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For the Princely Government, for the moment, there is no question of considering an increase in its shares: “This question has not presented itself thus far. If it comes up again, we will think about it. Given the budgets involved, it will be very difficult in any case.”

Prince Albert II even confided that he had no regrets about having sold a large part of his shares in 2011: “It would have been unreasonable (to keep them). I couldn’t imagine that, I talked about it with the government and the people involved in the club. It was the only option available to us. It would have been extremely unreasonable for the Principality to maintain the shareholding as it was before.”

The Prince approves of management’s new decision making

Beyond the sale of shares, the Prince also gave his opinion on the decisions taken by the club’s management. Despite a completely new direction for AS Monaco, with trading as the model, the Sovereign approved of this change of course: “It is a project that is significantly different from what we have been able to do in the past, it is the evolution of football but also of the costs linked to maintaining a team among the elite. (…) We manage to have some influence over certain things. But beyond that, we can’t intervene from day to day and I don’t want to either. You always have to find compromises so that the management of a club like Monaco can be positive. I regret that we cannot keep certain players for several years. But this is, unfortunately, the evolution of professional football.”

The Prince nevertheless assures us that he has confidence in the managers: “The managers have always been very courteous and benevolent. They have always listened to what we had to say. It’s a cordial understanding that I hope is constructive. That doesn’t mean that there haven’t been mistakes made. The club is moving in the right direction. We also hope that there will be results at the end.”