Divided by sporting and political rivalry, united by the lure of money. Real Madrid and Barcelona, irreducible, Blaugrana president Joan Laporta is Florentino Perez’s megaphone. The Superalloy is a necessity. The last word belongs to the shareholders: we invest, we have very high salaries and this, while preserving sporting merit, must be taken into account. Barcelona is number one in terms of turnover in Europe: 715 million, but with the weight of salaries – Messi’s half-billion contract the synthesis of an era of madness – in serious crisis. The Superlega as a mutual aid pact between clubs, to fill the financial holes caused by Covid without having to change your style and standard of living. This is what it was. Some facts to understand: the number one debt Tottenham: 685 million. Milan number one for losses: 195 million. Number one is called Chelsea: he has $ 19 million in cash; he closed the last balance sheet with a profit of 45 million and the owner is called Roman Abramovich, valued at $ 14.8 billion.
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By bringing together budgets and statistics, it becomes clear that the common denominator between the 12 unsustainable debt club. For some, not for others: the total is 2.7 billion but a quarter of Tottenham alone. And it’s not the devastating budget losses: Real, for example, have a small profit and Atletico in substantial balance. What united everyone was the business idea and the opportunistic prospect of selling a more attractive product for television and therefore obtaining more income by concentrating them in the perimeter of the alleged football conflict without them. disperse in the streams of minor clubs. It was also, implicitly, a kind of support for the group’s companies in financial difficulty: Tottenham, Inter and partly also Barcelona and Milan.
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Tottenham, who have lost 220million in two years, got a 200million loan from the Bank of England last year and now net debt has grown to 685million. the most delicate situation with that of Inter where in addition to the debt (322 million) the weakness of a shareholder, the Zhang family, paralyzed at home, weighed down and the accounting node of the Chinese sponsorships that have supported the accounts over the years. With only the entry price of the Superlega (around 290 million ed), Suning would have solved the financial problems immediately, points out Andrea Sartori, sports manager at Kpmg.
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Arsenal, like Tottenham, obtained a $ 130 million loan from the Central Bank in January and will repay it by May but has a solid capital structure: in the hands of the American billionaire Stan Kroenke, which brings together NBA and NFL teams, owns wineries in Napa Valley with personal wealth of over $ 8 billion.
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The photograph of the balance sheets of the twelve clubs that attempted the coup does not take into account two factors that make the difference. The first is the Covid effect, which in June 2020 (reference date for the figures reported here) was still only partially recorded. Closing the balance sheets this year, essentially on June 30, will cost all clubs, at all levels, tears and blood. And here is the second factor that makes the difference between one business and another and between one income statement and another: ownership.
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The 12 of the Super flop, unlike most professional football clubs, have billions of American (Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool) or Arab (Manchester City), Russian (Chelsea), industrial and family (Juventus) empires behind them. , Tottenham, Inter, Milan, Atletico), while Barcelona is a sports club with 180,000 associates and Real is also a private non-profit association.
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Now that the balance sheets must be closed, the shareholders who guided management decisions (and therefore also on costs) will have to guarantee the stability and continuity of companies.
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The latest news on the Superlega
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In other words, putting the money where it is needed, which means recapitalizing. And for those with billionaire reserves, from 3 for John Henry of Liverpool to 23 for the Arab Sheikh Mansour del Manchester City, it will be a nuisance but not a problem. After all, Chelsea teaches that you can play football at the highest level with budgets in profit.
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Once the coup has failed, it will be necessary to set out again other figures, which photograph the imbalance: the ten companies with the highest turnover in Europe have a turnover exceeding the more than 600 of the leagues outside England, Spain, Italy, France and Germany. In the past 20 years, only three teams outside of the Big Five (Ajax, Porto and PSV) have reached the Champions semi-finals.: The big mistake was not to intervene on the costs of football, totally uncontrollable, problem amplified by the pandemic – underlines Sartori -. No business can survive if a third of turnover is used to cover wages, a slight drop in income and a crisis is enough. We need a “salary cap” at national and European level, more flexible than the American model: it would still be effective. After the Superlega, one thing is certain: the next Messi and Ronaldo will win less, much less.
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