SAFC’s Uruguayan director, Juan Sartori, has become the most successful legal drug dealer in history, after selling his company’s stake in International Cannabis Company (ICC) for $220m. Confused? Let us explain.
When Uruguay became the first country in the world to totally legalize cannabis, in December 2013, Sartori, who owns 20% of SAFC, decided to seize the opportunity to become ICC’s main shareholder. In October 2016, ICC were then given license by the Uruguayan government to produce up to two tons of weed a year, which is sold legally, in Uruguay, through government registered shops. These outlets bring in millions in tax revenue for the Uruguayan government, which is reinvested in education and health care.
However, after building up the business, Sartori’s ICC have now sold out to Canada based Aurora Cannabis, just as cannabis has also been made legal in Canada. Aurora’s Terry Booth said: “ICC is an ideal partner for Aurora to establish leadership in the South American market for cannabis, providing a clear advantage as the first player in a continent with more than 420 million people."
Let’s hope some of these profits are used to strengthen Sunderland’s squad come the January window…
Here’s an interview that Sartori conducted in January 2017
In other news, Charlie Wyke will be out until early December with the knee injury he sustained during a collision with Burton’s Dimitar Evtimov on Saturday. I guess it’s time for Jerome Sinclair to shine.
In other news, Jack Ross has been chatting about tactics and formations following his decision to play the most attack minded team possible at Burton on Saturday. “I think that everybody has their own opinions on how rigid systems can be,” he said. “The one thing for me is that any system I’ve played has always had a degree of flexibility in it. If you play a 4-2-3-1 but with three midfielders, then it is one up front. If you play it but with two strikers, one of whom you’re asking to drop in, people watching might not be able to say whether or not it is a 4-4-2. Then, you watch other teams and they can be in a 4-3-3 in possession but out of it, it is very much a 4-1-4-1. These things are so fluid nowadays, I think the personnel is more important than the system,” he added. “The number of attackers you have on a pitch is probably a better reflection of your system than where the players are. The one thing I would say we need to get better at is when we play with one and three behind, the rotation of those three and the flexibility of their movements. That’s been hampered again by injuries and the fact that we’ve had to chop and change. I think we’re still finding exactly what works best for us, at home and away, both. That’s not a criticism of the players, it is just due to the fact that our squad was bitty to begin with and it was all new. Speaking to people in the league and who’ve had success in it, that ability to be flexible has been a positive, teams who have been promoted have had that flexibility. We’re pretty structured in our work every week and like all clubs that includes analysis work on our opposition. We split that fairly evenly between what we do and what we feel are weaknesses in the opposition, and then on the flip side what their strengths are and what they will try and do. That is constant every week, so how they’re going to approach it in terms of their system is OK. The thing we’ve had to get better at understanding is how aggressive they are in their approach in the game, which doesn’t mean committing foul after foul, it means been positive in the game. It can be difficult to predict, not every team who has come to the Stadium of Light has done that. Other teams might try and replicate it because teams have had success with it, but equally they might not think that’s the best way for them and their players. That is harder to predict, how they’ll approach things from a psychological aspect.”
