Dragan’s den: meeting Southampton’s new billionaire owner

Two days after Southampton held Manchester City to a 1-1 draw at St Mary’s last weekend, the club’s new majority owner, Dragan Šolak, looks extremely pleased with his purchase. It was “an absolutely supreme performance playing against probably the best team in the world”, says Šolak, visibly excited by memories of watching his new team end City’s 12-match winning streak.

Born in Serbia and based in Switzerland, Šolak met the Guardian in a suite of offices tucked away in an elegant apartment block in central Milan, one of many places he spends time, he says. He plans to attend as many Southampton games as his travel schedule allows.

Before the Southampton purchase, Šolak almost never gave interviews and shunned the public eye. “I really like being a private person, and hopefully I’ll go back to that soon,” he says, speaking fluent English in a booming voice, accompanied by expressive hand gestures.

Šolak’s estimated £1.4bn wealth is mainly derived from the 33% stake he retains in United Group, a Netherlands-based company he built from scratch that controls media assets across the Balkans.

He agreed to answer questions about Southampton, but what he really wanted to talk about was the political situation in his home country, where Aleksandar Vučić, now the president, has continually tightened his grip on the media since he first became prime minister in 2014.

“My focus is really to put the light on the media freedom situation in Serbia,” says Šolak, whose news channel N1 is now in Vučić’s crosshairs. “I think Vučić is making a case of how a dictator can, by playing nice and polite, get really far in Europe,” he says, railing at those in the EU who back Vučić.

The Premier League is a player in this story too, with Šolak’s