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Welcome to issue #080 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.
A club signs a striker in January.
Three-year contract. High salary.
He scores. The team survives.
Everyone agrees it was the right move.
Six months later, they’re trying to get out of the contract.
Same player.
Different judgment.
Nothing changed about the player.
Something else did.
What actually breaks inside a club
Most people think clubs fail because of bad decisions.
They don’t.
They fail because a decision that makes sense in one room
doesn’t make sense in another.
A football club looks like one entity.
It isn’t.
It’s a set of different logics:
the coach needs points now
the sporting director thinks in cycles
the owner looks at risk
the commercial side looks at growth
Each one is coherent.
On its own.
The problem starts when those logics are not aligned.
How misalignment shows up
It’s never abstract.
It’s always visible in decisions.
A young player signed because “he has value.”
He doesn’t play.
No development. No exposure. No exit.
A promotion push.
Wages go from €12m to €20m.
No change in structure.
Miss promotion once, and everything becomes heavy.
A coach change.
New ideas arrive.
Old contracts stay.
You start carrying decisions that were never meant to coexist.
From the outside, it looks like poor execution.
From the inside, it’s something else.
The club is not deciding as one system.
Don’t think we are talking about small fifth division clubs.
This happens daily, also in clubs with hundreds of millions in revenues.
The real difference between clubs
Most clubs operate in two tracks.
Football decides.
Business adjusts.
Or the opposite.
So every decision becomes a negotiation.
A compromise.
The clubs that work don’t try to balance this.
They remove it.
When they sign a player, the question is not:
“Is he good?”
It’s:
“Does this decision work for the whole system?”
for the coach
for the wage structure
for the next transfer
If one piece breaks, the deal stops.
Same logic, everywhere.
Contracts.
Timing.
Squad building.
Where the advantage really is
This is harder than it sounds.
Because football and business think differently.
One thinks in points.
The other in cash.
Most clubs spend time translating.
The best ones don’t.
They operate with one logic.
And over time, you see the difference.
Fewer emergency decisions.
Cleaner squads.
Players that move at the right moment.
Because they are aligned.
The question that matters
Most investors start from:
players
revenues
But those are outputs.
The real question is simpler:
Are decisions made inside one system…or negotiated between two?
Because once they are negotiated, a cost is already there.
You won’t see it immediately.
You’ll see it later.
In contracts you can’t move.
In players you can’t use.
In seasons you can’t fix.
In football, the most expensive mistake is not a bad signing.
It’s a decision made by two systems.
Federico
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