European football increasingly rich, but also increasingly indebted. This is what has recently emerged, respectively from the study Football Money League 2012 by Deloitte and by the UEFA report on financial fair play, announced by President Platini, according to which the overall deficit of the 665 clubs of the top continental championships in 2011 reached the record figure of 1,6 billion euro, while the total debt reaches 15 billion.
A worrying trend, only partially offset by the growing turnover of the 20 largest clubs (including 5 Italian clubs: Milan, Inter, Juventus, Rome and Naples), who however continue to spend more than they collect.
And if the solution came from the country of Roi Michel, France? The question arises from the transalpine newspaper Le Figaro: “Are football clubs financial entities like the others or not?”. If, they should or could also be subjected to the famous rating, or to the control and evaluation by third party companies.
Impossible, according to AT Kearney's consultants: if they functioned like normal businesses, explains the agency in a study published a year ago, within two years the Italian Serie A, the Spanish La Liga and the English Premier League would fail. Especially the last two, according to the data of the most important teams: Manchester United is the most indebted club in Europe with 815,7 million euros, followed by Chelsea with 798,6, Valencia with 570,8, Liverpool with 400, Real Madrid with 337 and Barcelona with 311.
And would France therefore be the most virtuous? Not really, but if the rating were to start today, her teams would be the ones with the best score. Simply because a sort of rating beyond the Alps already exists. Indeed, the LFP, Ligue de Football Professionnel, already has an external and independent control body, comparable to a rating agency: the so-called DNCG, the National Management Control Directorate. This body requires professional clubs to comply with criteria of sporting and also financial balance. And if they don't, the sanction comes: a ban on transactions for the purchase of players, a freeze on contracts, up to relegation.
The system would seem to work, given that even if the French clubs are not navigating in the best waters, they are certainly more virtuous than their European competitors: up until 2008, while a deficit of 536 million euros was already recorded on the continent, the transalpine league was still in profit (by 25 million), and in the last season, after the collapse of 2009-2010 (-114 million), the deficit has been reduced in the forecasts to 46 million, compared to the billion and 600 million of the entire continent. Furthermore, out of the total debt of 15 billion, only 90 million are chargeable to Ligue 1 companies.
So why not extend the model to all of Europe, perhaps through a real rating? “A real football rating agency – he explains Fabrice Lorvo, sports marketing specialist at FTPA – would only benefit the image, as regards the reliability of a company that, for example, asks banks or its own shareholders for money. But in the end it remains only a tool, not the solution to the problem”.
Whether or not it is configured as a rating agency, this model is the dream of the UEFA president, who would like to apply it to financial fair play which will come into force in the 2013-2014 season. From that date, football clubs across the continent will have to choose whether to be able to collect much more (difficult, given the crisis), or whether, more likely, to spend much less. In Italy, the only two theoretically “triple A” teams at the moment would be Udinese and Napoli (which in the meantime has also made its entry among the 20 richest clubs on the continent), thanks to a policy of containing salaries. Juventus would also have a high score, currently heavily in debt but close to a turning point thanks to the new stadium. But looking at all the others, there is really a strong risk that Serie A will be cut to Serie BBB.
