Juan Sartori and Charlie Methven reveal Sunderland ambitions as season kicks off

After being granted EFL approval, Sartori has now being confirmed as a Sunderland director and he will attend today's season opener against Charlton Athletic.

He has bought a 20% stake in the club.

Sartori said: "Football is one of my passions and I always wanted to do something in the sport.

“We see a lot of potential and all the infrastructure is already here, but something has been missing, otherwise the club wouldn’t be in this situation.

“We think we have the skills, and especially the willingness, to really put the effort and dedication into making this right, and to taking the club back to where we believe it deserves to be.”

Sartori has strong connections with both Stewart Donald and Charlie Methven, with the Uruguayan businessman trying to takeover Oxford United recently.

Donald and Methven believe that Sartori's football connections will be crucial as they aim to achieve their goal of making the Black Cats a stable Premier League side in five years.

Sartori's father-in-law, Dmitry Rybolovlev, is President of Monaco, who have enjoyed spectacular success in recent years.

Methven, meanwhile, feels that the club are in a 'decent position' ahead of the league opener against Charlton Athletic.

"If someone had said that we’d be in a current position when we took over we’d have said, ‘we’ll take that, decent result’," Methven told BBC Newcastle.

"I wouldn’t want to pre-judge what will happen on the playing side," he added.

"Pride comes before a fall when it comes to competitive sport. We hope and believe that we have put together a competitive playing squad, and it’s one which is going to get more competitive as the weeks go by.

"Jack [Ross] has said a couple of times that we’re probably a couple of weeks behind where we’d like to be. I think that was probably always going to the way, it’s just been such a big turnaround of players. It’s probably been at least double the amount of normal turnover that a League One club would normally have. Hopefully come Saturday it’ll all come right."