How millionaire spending in soccer affects today’s sport? The clubs in some cases have resorted to loans and other financial vehicles to sustain their operations and stay afloat. But this can cause a big problem in the medium term since the debts are in the millions and profits are not increasing as projected.
The Covid 19 pandemic has had a profound effect on the sports world. Businesses and companies have lost millions of dollars and sports were no exeption as the virus outbreak led to the cancellation or postponement of many sporting events, resulting in a loss of revenue for both the organizers and the athletes.
The president of Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) Al-Khelaïfi has made a special request and calls for regulations to prevent teams from going into debt at such a high level since it can be very harmful to the industry.
Debt is a great danger; if rules are not established to help avoid these can seriously affect in the near future.
Also, as president of the ECA, he has again expressed himself against the Super League and could not hide.
He also feelings and revealed a criticism against the significant debt that Barça faces.
As a businessman thinks that European soccer urgently needs to implement these rules to avoid indebtedness.
According to Al-Khelaïfi, it cannot be forgotten that the investment made in football is what really allowed to survive the pandemic.
How this affects teams and players
UEFA manage to implement a truly successful protocol which allowed it to organize 1,432 matches with 163,844 COVID tests, and more than 99% of the matches were played as planned.
But even so, with the protocols, many of the clubs lost a lot of money. Significant loss a considerable amount led to high debt. The debt amount is aorund 1,800 million euros which is not easy to ignore and is what puts the issue on the table.
Al-Khelaïfi has said, “People stay four or five years as president and then leave the debt and become a disaster for another president.
That is what has been happening cycle after cycle. This is what we must look at and worry about because that is what can destroy football. We need rules to protect clubs from debt and disaster.” he added.
A football club cannot deal with debt in the same way a business does; it is the problem that nobody sees. This is not like other sports where sports teams are corporations.
Although he does not stop seeing in the future the brilliant progress that football will have, that is only if you think outside the box; you have to be more creative and really work hard to generate the public’s interest.
“The world of soccer is gigantic; we cannot think that it is just about only two or three clubs, and we must make people see that there are no elites of preference or favoritism.
What this means for the future of soccer
“You call it the Super League. I call it the non-Super League. It is Al-Khelaïfi’s sarcasm, and he warns that a league should not exist if it does not respect small or medium-sized clubs because he believes that respect should be complete for small, medium, and large teams without forgetting respect for the largest group that are the fans.
It is seen that some clubs do not want small clubs to become big clubs. The fear of competition is clearly seen”; that is what Al-Khelaïfi thinks.
These comments allude to the failed Super League that the elites of European soccer tried to create, and also on the subject, he stressed that the format and concept of the Champions League and its tournaments are successful.
His entrepreneurial mind leads him to ask to invest in women’s soccer, which he knows will sooner or later explode and great benefits will be seen. He invites to be patient with the process, and that things don’t just happen, you have to invest in the process to achieve a more competitive Women’s Champions League.
The influx of millionaire spending in soccer is changing the sport
As long as there is no more rigorous regulation of indebtedness, soccer will continue to be in danger since the trend of the most expensive signing continues to grow, and this puts in a competition not really of high-level players, but in which team dared to pay more.
At the close of the market 22-23, Arsenal has spent 132 million, Manchester 108 million, and Chelsea 94 million, to mention a few, but this trend in spending on transfers does not decrease; on the contrary, it increases, and this endangers teams.
How millionaire spending in soccer affects today’s sport?
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