How serious is the debt situation of clubs a problem?

Question

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richest_football_clubs

The "in" thing seems to be to get your club owned by some private foreign source of infinite money and the problems are away. Id hate that happening to my club AC Milan tbh :/

We are actually not in dept compared to the top teams who all have a great percentage of their value listed as actual debt, some up to even 65% of their value being dept.

What is your take on this? is it really a problem for these clubs with possible risks of bankruptcy and thus the end of the club??

Answer 1

it's not that English team are "desperate" to be owned by billionaires, it's because the filthy Rich blokes know they can make it big in the EPL quicker than if he bought over a Spanish club or Italian because EPL is bigger at the moment. teams are tempted to let them in tho but your right....clubs like city and Chelsea,west ham, will be in ruin's when and if there Rich owners leave them.

(no biased answer there) just my view.

Answer 2

That's exactly what's happening to Red Star Belgrade. We had an enormous debt to ah I don't know who some local big dude and that's exactly how we ended up - doomed. Now Zepter wants to buy us. The point is: There can't be any serious Football without investments. For example, finance isn't really our stronger side. Without investing, merchandise, big cash there is no what we call Football at the moment [although Calcio already kind of took the wrong turn, it's already mostly business, yes mostly] so I think that is what leads to dept. Over-payed players, too much on the manager, etc etc. That's how Man City, Man U and probably Liverpool too will end their "careers". I would be upset if Inter found itself in a situation like that, 65 % is more than half which is a huge amount of money considering how much clubs spend on buying-selling, annually. The point is they don't know how to use the money right, psh. Debt is the EASIEST way to get destruction, well actually, self-destruction of a club.

Answer 3

Hey in the case of Liverpool (65% of value in debt) and ManU (60% of value in debt) its only a matter of time before they sell the clubs to some other rich foreigners.

Don't worry, thats not gonna happen to non-EPL clubs.  They're the only desperate ones who are only in it for the money.

Sure it is about the money, I've said before football is a business, but when an Italian club is owned by an Italian or a Spanish club owned by a Spaniard, then there's also an element of patriotism involved, it is not JUST a business, it is also about developing home grown talent and making sure your national team can compete on the international stage.  For example 3 Italian youngsters from Inter's academy have joined the first team, and more are on the way.  You don't see that from the EPL teams, which also explains the crisis the English national team is in.

When the club is owned by a foreigner, it is purely a business to them.  Do you think Abramovic gives a flying f*ck about England?  The new Arabian owners of Man. City?  The American owners of Liverpool?

Of course they don't.  And they're not the only ones.

Answer 4

defo.. agree with him!^^^^^^^^^^^^^