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Laporta leads in Barca election race, but Messi is a problem

Barca’s presidential elections are coming up next year, but the race has already started. Joan Laporta’s potential opponents are already making moves. Last month, the 2021 runner-up to Laporta, Victor Font, launched his candidacy at an event attended by over 1,000 people. These figures might not seem too significant in the context of such a massive brand, but in the particular world of FC Barcelona, every bit of support counts. Barca’s elections will take place before the end of the season. According to the club’s statutes, they need to be held on a day between March and June, but there is still no confirmation on when the exact day will be. Candidates must have been club members for a minimum of 10 years, and they also need to reach a certain number of supporting signatures: at least half the total votes cast in the most recent annual general assembly. For the purposes of this election, they will need around 2,300. According to the latest numbers released by Barca in October, ...
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Does grassroots football get a fair deal?

The House of Lords Library has produced a report on the state of non-league and grassroots football:  https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/non-league-and-grassroots-football-what-is-the-state-of-play/ In my experience of appearing before Commons and Lords committees, the latter are often more knowledgeable and produce better reports. One of the key arguments in this report is that the new football regulator arrangements apply just to the top five leagues with most of the money going to the top 26 cluba.
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Government acts on frozen Chelsea funds

Sir Keir Starmer has issued a licence to transfer £2.5bn of frozen assets from Roman Abramovich’s sale of Chelsea Football Club to Ukraine, warning the Russian former owner that the UK government is prepared to take him to court if he fails to release the funds.   “My message to Abramovich is . . . the clock is ticking, honour the commitment you made and pay up now,” Starmer said during Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday. “If you don’t, we’re prepared to go to court so every penny reaches those whose lives have been torn apart by Putin’s illegal war.” Since Abramovich sold Chelsea and other investments for £2.5bn in 2022 to a consortium led by US investors Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital, the multibillion-pound proceeds have remained frozen in a UK bank account. Fordstam, the UK entity through which Abramovich owned Chelsea, filed accounts for the year ended June 2022 last month at Companies House, showing that the proceeds could ultimately be lower than the £2.5bn hea...
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City post small loss

Manchester City recorded their first non-Covid financial year loss in a decade as they invested heavily in first-team signings, reports the New York Times.  City posted their third-highest revenue total of £694.1million – a decrease of £20.9m compared to the year before – but lost £9.9m for the year ending June 30, 2025. City brought in £145m from player sales and committed £353m on new players, but chief executive Ferran Soriano stated that these were not short-term fixes, rather an acceleration of the investment planned to kickstart a new cycle. As with the previous year’s accounts, the board acknowledged that the 115 Premier League charges the club has faced since February 2023 was one of “a number of risks and uncertainties which could have a material impact on the Club’s performance”. City’s fallow year on the field in 2024-25 was mirrored by a slowing of the financial juggernaut off it, as declining revenues saw the prior season’s £73.8million pre-tax profit swing to a ...
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What is going on with Maresca at Chelsea?

Who would be a football manager?  Clearly a lot of people want to be, but at a top six club it is a real pressure cooker dealing with owners, players, the media (both mainstream and social) and fans.  (I am assuming here that the manager’s role is focused on coaching as us often the case today, although recruitment by a director of football is clearly a potential source of tension.) So what is going on at Chelsea?   We are nearly half a week on from Enzo Maresca’s sudden outburst following Chelsea’s game over Everton — and it is still unclear exactly what caused it. Any hope that a 3-1 win over Cardiff City to progress to the Carabao Cup semi-finals would lighten Maresca’s mood were soon quashed post match. Two goals from Alejandro Garnacho and one from Pedro Neto ended the League One side’s resistance but did not put a stop to the drama of the last few days. After smiling during the post-match celebrations on the pitch in front of an away support singing his name f...
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Poor on pitch performances hit Ajax

As Ajax has pointed out in the past, its financial prospects are often driven by sporting results, so the lack of success has also been reflected in the bottom line. As a result, Ajax’s pre-tax loss significantly widened from €13m to €52m, which is the worst result in the club’s history, reports the Swiss Ramble. As Shashi Baboeram Panday, the finance director, explained, “The result is a consequence of the past few years: not playing the Champions League and having the cost management that comes with the Champions League. As a result, there is a loss.” The deterioration was very largely driven by much lower profit on player sales, which dropped €72m from €82m to just €10m. Revenue actually rose €26m (17%) from €152m to €178m, while operating expenses decreased €3m (1%) from €242m to €239m and net interest payable more than halved from €6m to €3m. After tax, the loss was smaller at €37m, due to a €14m tax credit, but this was still almost four times as much as the prior year’s ...
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Offer for Juve is simply too low

Sports, crypto billionaires, industrial dynasties, special voting rights and Italian politics: Tether’s bid for Juventus football club stamps every number on the dysfunctional M&A bingo card, argues the Financial Times. . Tether, the biggest issuer of stable coins, has offered to buy the 36-time Italian champions for €1.1bn in cash. It already has an 11.5 per cent stake but picking up the rest requires it to win over the Agnelli family, known for its role in founding carmaker Fiat. The Agnellis have controlled Juventus for more than 100 years. Exor, their holding company, insists the team is not for sale. There are good reasons for family scion John Elkann, who runs Exor, to turn down Tether’s current offer. His company is already under fire from politicians for trying to sell its famous local newspapers; selling another national champion to an 11-year-old crypto company based in El Salvador could bring further political risks. More importantly, the bid is simply too low. Juv...
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