Welcome to issue #032 of Contemporary Football, your inside look at how the game really works behind the scenes.
Monday to Friday, you’ll uncover a new perspective on football business, and sometimes a deeper story that sharpens your thinking and gives you an edge in the beautiful game.
If you need support on your football journey, just write me.
Hey everyone,
Last Friday, I was invited to teach a course as part of the FIFA CIES International Programme.
The FIFA/CIES Programme is offered in around 20 universities worldwide.
This was the fourth time I had taught within this programme, following my experiences in Ecuador, Colombia, and Riyadh.
Warsaw was next.
I wish I could have stayed longer.
I would have liked to set up meetings with Legia Warsaw and the Polish FA.
But it’s the end of the year.
The agenda is still full.
And I was coming off six straight weeks of airports and flights (Germany, Spain, UK, Saudi Arabia, and now Poland).
So it was a classic touch-and-go.
Friday in.
Saturday night out.
Still, it was enough to get a feeling.
Warsaw, first impressions
Just like in Saudi Arabia, what struck me most was the people.
Smart. Curious. Fast.
Poland feels like a country that’s moving forward quickly, with a strong desire to keep growing.
Warsaw’s Old Town is elegant and beautiful.
Other areas are ultra-modern, full of new skyscrapers and energy.
My hotel was in one of those districts.
I look forward to coming back.
Inside Kozminski University
Saturday morning, 10 a.m.
I walked into Kozminski University, one of the partners of the FIFA CIES programme.
It’s a modern building. New. Bright.
The kind of place where you actually want to spend time learning.
(Not all universities feel like that.)
With the students, we worked on two case studies:
PSG’s investment in Bitcoin, not as a financial move, but as an anthropological and cultural strategy.
Fortuna Düsseldorf’s decision to offer free tickets to fans, and what that means for value creation, identity, and long-term sustainability.
They’re cases I’ve already taught this year, and they always work well.
Because they show one simple thing:
There is no single way to run a football club.
And challenging the status quo can create real advantages.
The students
What impressed me most was the level of the students.
Prepared.
Curious.
Genuinely interested in sports business, not just the glamour around it.
You could feel the energy in the room.
Sport in Poland is in good hands.
A personal note
This year I’ve taught several courses.
There’s always more work behind each one than it might seem from the outside.
But they’re experiences that give a lot back.
They allow me to meet different sporting cultures.
To understand where sport is going in a specific country.
And to learn just as much as I teach.
When I graduated, studying sport as a business barely existed.
It wasn’t even considered a real path.
Telling a parent that you wanted to study sport was almost an insult!
Fortunately, those days are long gone.
Today, sports business programmes are everywhere.
And that can only be good for the future of sport.
I hope 2026 will give me more chances to teach, to visit universities, and to meet students with a promising future ahead of them.
Giving is always better than receiving.
See you tomorrow,
Federico