Football has a great emotional and financial impact on many Europeans. While I do not agree that it reflects the culture of a nation it is a rather interesting topic especially for a fan like me. In some ways from a financial point of view it looks like a smaller version of the Eurocrisis with a club Med and fiscally responsible Germany. (I will leave out the Premier, which is not on the continent and has sold out anyway).
Top 20 European clubs by revenue
Revenue does of course not equal income. The Spanish clubs have 3,500,000,000 € of debt, with 750 millions of them being in unpaid taxes and roughly 600 millions due to social security (poor players). The spanish government reacted relative mildly, causing furor in at least one country competiting at the highest level against them.
And the best part from one of the greatest football managers of all times:When faced with the prospect of the Spanish government waiving the collective €752m debt the nation's football clubs owe to the country's tax authorities, the reaction in Europe last week was one of outrage. The German tabloid Bild even asked how long the German taxpayer would be obliged to subsidise the wages of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Anyway personally I very worried about the state of the Italian football. Lost the 4th place in the Champions League due to an increasing weakness over the last ten years and terrible performances in the less prominent European league the last Report Calcio 2012 is a dismal read. Pretty much performance indicator bar debt has been going down. We stand now at a debt of 2,6 billion thanks to losses 400 million €. Our % of equity stands at a grand 5%...Uli Hoeness, the outspoken president of Bayern Munich, got to the point rather more quickly when asked about the proposal to excuse Spanish clubs their tax debt. "This is unthinkable," he said. "We pay them hundreds of millions to get them out the #### and then the clubs don't pay their debts."
Financial fair play can hardly come early enough
While the Serie A and La Liga have a massive amount of debt the Bundesliga has a far smaller one of 600 millions (1/4th of the Serie A, 1/6th of la Liga) and has been also the most profitable. In this case almost all the good numbers are going up and bad ones down. Far from perfect but not comparable to our purgatorio.
Of course my club has also quite some financial problems not considering the poor performance in the campionato. And that only two years after the triplete. For excellent info go here.
Come Oriali - Una vita da mediano. (Mediano: central midfielder, box-to-box player with high stamina, intelligence and discipline)
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