Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis is “very optimistic” about finalising a deal that will see former Arsenal sporting director Edu oversee his growing portfolio of clubs.
Edu resigned from his role at Arsenal last month and Marinakis has confirmed the Brazilian is now in talks to join his empire.
As well as Nottingham Forest, Marinakis owns Greek giants Olympiacos and Portuguese side Rio Ave, while he would like to add Brazilian club Vasco to that, too.
Marinakis believes the hiring of Edu would be a statement, given he would be leaving Arsenal, and is confident a deal can be completed.
“Edu was a very good player and also a very good sporting and technical director,” Marinakis told Sky Sports News. “I have a lot of respect for him.
“The results we saw over the years at Arsenal were very good and he has done an excellent job at Arsenal.
“What I can say is that I would like to cooperate with him on a much bigger project, a global project. I’m optimistic that in case all this goes ahead, it will be another successful venture for both of us.
“I’m very optimistic about it, but we need to see how this will be developed and will be finalised, if and when time allows.
“Yes [it would be quite the statement]. And I think that there are a lot of people that want to cooperate with us and work with us and that means that they respect us and they appreciate what we do.
“It gives us satisfaction that what we do is something that is appealing to very good people in the industry.”
Forest have made a strong start to this season and they are currently sixth in the Premier League, with Marinakis eyeing European football in the future.
“Yes, I think that is realistic,” he said, when asked if Forest could regularly compete with the Premier League’s ‘Big Six’ in the future.
“And it’s up to us at the end of the day. I think it’s very important to take responsibility. So I take responsibility in the bad times; in the good times we can share this responsibility.
“It’s something pleasant to share responsibilities during good times and victories, but in the difficult times you need to take responsibility, correct your mistakes and act accordingly so you can recover and fight back and come back and win.”
Marinakis confirmed that talks are ongoing over a possible deal for Vasco as he looks to grow his portfolio of clubs..
“There are discussions and what I can say is that whatever I want to get involved in needs to be something major,” he said.
“The tradition is very important and it always makes more sense to me to manage or to own.
“But in big clubs where we’re talking about millions of supporters, you don’t consider it as ownership.
“I cannot use the word that I ‘bought’ Olympiacos or I ‘bought’ Nottingham Forest. This is something huge.
“It’s for all the supporters, for millions of people, so I cannot see it as a business. It’s very important, in whatever I’m involved in, to be a team that has a big supporter base.
“Portugal is an exception. It’s a smaller team. But what we need to do is for this team also to be upgraded and to be one of the [top] six or seven teams in Portugal. It’s very important because, for us, the Brazilian market is very important.
“We have some very good players that have played over the years in Olympiacos and also now in Nottingham Forest. But in Portugal, Brazilians, they play as Europeans. It’s a gate, let’s say, for Brazilian players into Europe. And for me this is very important for the years to come.”
