After a pitiful end to 2025-26, Everton supporters have looked over to Rome, the home of one of Dan Friedkin’s other clubs, AS Roma, with envy.
Roma enjoyed their best season in Serie A since they were bought by The Friedkin Group in 2020. They finished 3rd and will play in the Champions League next term.
Yes, there was turbulence off the pitch as head coach Gian Piero Gasperini and advisor Claudio Ranieri clashed, resulting in the latter leaving the club after Friedkin intervened. But even that ostensible low has been used by Everton fans to suggest that their owner’s priorities lie in Italy, not England.
Friedkin is yet to visit the Hill Dickinson Stadium and, while the situation since his takeover from Farhad Moshiri has clearly improved substantially, some supporters are craving a personal touch.
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Toffees' links to Roma and AS Cannes could be problematic – but there are benefits too
Roma and Everton aren’t Friedkin’s only clubs, though. The group has also owned AS Cannes since 2023. And they too enjoyed their best campaign in the Friedkin era in 2025-26.
They were promoted to the third tier of French football at the end of the season after narrowly missing out in 2024-25, when they also reached the Coupe de France semi-final.
Cannes’ geography is close to Friedkin’s heart. His first love, ahead of sport, is Hollywood. And Cannes’ world-famous Film Festival, as well as the club’s seat on the French Riviera, make it an attractive asset, albeit one whose value is a fraction of Roma and Everton’s. They have history too: they played in Europe in the 1990s, when Zinedine Zidane and Patrick Vieira turned out for the club.
With Cannes now just a pair of promotions from Ligue 1, could The Friedkin Group invest more resources? And what might that mean for Everton?
Speaking exclusively to Everton News, University of Liverpool football finance expert Professor Kieran Maguire says that the collapse of French football’s £2.8bn TV deal last year could provide a unique opportunity for Cannes to gate-crash the elite.
“There is already some concern among the Everton fanbase about the Friedkin Group giving more resources to AS Roma.
“The buy-in costs in French football are very low because of the collapse of the TV deals, so I think Friedkin probably sees it as a distressed environment where they have managed to get a club on the cheap.
“They probably don’t really even know what their end game is, but it seems like such a good bargain. There is the possibility of getting into the Champions League in France at a lower cost.
“Have they got an overall budget for football? I don’t think they have – I think they would be willing to set up a separate budget for Cannes and, on the back of that, it shouldn’t impact Everton.
“The concern is if they end up in the same European competition. They did seem very, very confident that they would have been okay without a blind trust if they had qualified for Europe with Roma.”
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