Dressed in a grey suit and dark knitted tie, Andrea Agnelli stands to greet me across a table clad in white linen. He offers a hand, fingers pointed up. We adopt the grip of arm wrestlers, the handshake of sportsmen before a big match.
Agnelli is a scion of the Italian industrialists who founded Fiat and invested in Ferrari. When I refer to them as a “clan”, Agnelli laughs and says Sergio Marchionne, the late chief executive of the car companies, referred to the family as “the zoo”.
The 48-year-old is the fourth of his name — after his grandfather, uncle and father — to take possession of a prized heirloom: Juventus, Italy’s most successful football club. Over his 12-year tenure as president of the Turin-based side, the “Old Lady” won a record nine Serie A Italian league titles in a row, and twice reached the final of the Champions League, Europe’s premier club tournament. Agnelli was also among the sport’s power brokers as chair of the European Club Association, the body that represents the continent’s biggest teams.