Two such famous boys fighting over a nationally popular toy had every headline writer and talk show host in frenzy for weeks. It was a bitter fight with a rival at least as tough as he was and resulted in an even more bitter loss. Zanni felt he'd been singled out by the media for ridicule, and looked for someone other than himself to blame for his humiliation. He settled on an easy target: old-line Athens society. Many old-liners barely hid their disdain for what they considered upstart, political opportunist, nouveaux riches. Accusing them of relishing his fall was undoubtedly accurate. What he couldn't accept, though, was the obvious fact that old-line society would prefer both men to perish in the press.
His anger simmered for months. Then he decided he'd show them all – all of Athens – his power, by making his name a feared, if not respected, household word in another way: newspaper ownership. And not just any paper, but Greece's oldest and most respected, The Athenian. As virtually everyone in Athens knew, The Athenian had been in the Linardos family for generations and, though other papers boasted larger circulations, none came close to rivaling its influence among the nation's elite.
'Fuck them,' was Zanni's reaction to a terse message declining his offer to buy the paper at a generous multiple of its economic value and pointedly suggesting that he try going after another soccer team instead; perhaps a second division one in northern Greece up by the border with 'one of those former Soviet countries.'