Arnhem football club Vitesse has a team of five new owners—two Americans, two Germans, and one Italian.

Dane Murphy, Flint Reilly (from the US), Timo Raasch, Leon Müller (from Germany), and Italian Bryan Mornaghi have jointly bought the club’s €17 million debt from its biggest creditor Coley Parry.

Parry stepped into keep the club afloat after Vitesse was put up for sale by its Russian owner, Valery Oyf, shortly after the invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. Attempts to sell the club since then have failed.

The new owners have opted to stay out of the limelight for the time being, and why they decided to take over the club remains unclear.

Murphy has a long history in professional football, having played for VfL Osnabrück and New York Cosmos and been a director at English clubs Barnsley and Nottingham Forest.

Müller is a businessman and hosts a football podcast, and Reilly worked in Liverpool’s commercial division for a time. Mornaghi is a lawyer, and Raasch is a strategic investor with interests in sport and entertainment.

“The shareholders are young, ambitious, realistic, and determined to do what is best for Vitesse,” the club said in a statement. “That will take time. Vitesse deserves to become a self-reliant club that focuses on the continual development of its youth, players, and organisation rather than short-term success.”

Vitesse is currently on -8 points in the first division, after penalties imposed by the Dutch football association KNVB due to the club’s financial problems. It was relegated from the Eredivisie last year after failing to submit a budget.

The new owners do not have to be cleared by the KNVB because each owns less than 25% of the shares.

Vitesse is the second oldest professional football club in the Netherlands and was founded in 1892, four years after Sparta Rotterdam.