Primeira Liga club set for €10m cash injection amid Aston Villa and Wes Edens investment links
BirminghamLive brings you news from across Europe with Aston Villa owners Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens looking to expand their V Sports portfolio
Portuguese club Vitoria S.C are set for an injection of €10million (£8.5million) by an unnamed Premier League club. The Primeira Liga side have been linked with a partnership deal with Aston Villa.
Christian Purslow was due to meet with Vitoria's previous president Miguel Pinto Lisboa, who was replaced last month by Antonio Miguel Cardoso following an election. It is understood Villa want Vitoria - currently sixth in Portugal's top division - to be a part of their new V Sports umbrella, Villa's parent company owned by Nassef Sawiries and Wes Edens.
A source told BirminghamLive : "Wes Edens was serious about investing in our club. Villa have been in touch outlining that they wanted to meet up here in Guimarães to know more about the club and infrastructure. [Villa] actually met up with our ex-president here, but I really don't know the situation right now. What I know is that the offer and the discussions are still on the table."
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Vitoria, meanwhile, recently held a fan consultation meeting with season ticket holders as they plan ahead for next season. The club's newly-elected president Cardoso, who has a football background in the US, outlined how Vitoria are set to benefit from a €10million investment.
A source added: "Vitoria dedicated the last 30 minutes [of the session] for season ticket holders to ask questions. Antonio Miguel Cardoso revealed that an English club will invest €10m on Vitoria, which will be sufficient. Fans have presumed it can only be from Aston Villa. Our club has many debts because of the pandemic so the money will help to stabilise us."
Speaking previously of Villa's plans to expand their club portfolio to mirror what clubs such as Man City and Chelsea have achieved in Europe, Purslow said: "This next phase is more global, to try and put Aston Villa at the heart of an international talent development, talent recruitment model for professional footballers. This will see the club investing in different regions and territories around the world where talent is not accessible directly by Aston Villa under the current rules and regulations.
"The next phase is to think carefully about how we secure access to the best footballing talent in the world. We think there are regions in the world where the kind of way Aston Villa has gone about developing young players, we can bring that knowhow and skill in emerging markets and somehow find ways to root those players into either professional clubs in those territories that we might invest in or, ultimately, back to Aston Villa. We think that can be a source of competitive advantage for our club."