Welcome to issue #065 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.
For years, Inter was the example people used when they wanted to talk about excess.
2020/21: –€245.6m in losses
Four seasons later, 30 June 2025:
+€35.4m
First profit in the club’s history.
The slope matters more than the number
Look at the path:
2020/21: –245.6
2021/22: –140.1
2022/23: –85.4
2023/24: –35.7
2024/25: +35.4
This is not a random rebound.
It’s a controlled descent into stability.
Every year, the loss was cut roughly in half.
That tells you something important.
They weren’t chasing miracles.
They were shrinking fragility.
Revenue quality
Total revenues excluding capital gains: €552.6m.
Two drivers stand out:
€190m from Champions League and performance bonuses
€31.4m from the Club World Cup
+27% growth in commercial revenues
Champions money helped.
But here’s the nuance: European revenue is volatile.
Finals don’t repeat by default.
Sponsors’ bonuses disappear quickly.
The real signal is commercial growth.
If you want to know whether a turnaround is real, look at recurring income.
Debt discipline
Financial debt reduced from €415m to €350m after refinancing the bond.
Reducing debt while returning to profit changes how you negotiate everything else.
Sponsors.
Banks.
Players.
Agents.
Balance sheet strength is silent power.
What this really shows
This isn’t about one good season.
It’s about margin.
Inter learned something expensive.
You can survive massive losses for a while.
You cannot build optionality with them.
Optionality is what profit buys you.
It buys patience.
It buys negotiation strength.
It buys the ability to make decisions without panic.
In football, that’s rare.
The deeper lesson
Turnarounds in football are usually misunderstood.
People focus on revenue spikes.
Or on selling one big player.
Real turnarounds are behavioural.
Less urgency.
More sequencing.
Fewer emotional bets.
Inter didn’t suddenly become smarter in 2025.
They stopped being financially reckless in 2021.
That’s where this story starts.
The +€35m is just the visible part.
The real transformation happened in the discipline nobody applauds.
Can this structure hold without a Champions League final?
That’s the real test of a turnaround.
See you on Monday,
Federico