Todays La Repubblica published a series of articles regarding the financial status of Serie A's top clubs. All with the exception of Juventus are in the red: Inter: -17 Mil Milan: -30 Mil Parma: -35 Mil Roma: -105 Mil Lazio: -122 Mil Juve is in the black (by about 3 Mil) but only because of selling 27% of a owned company (whose 100% was bought for about 25M) to a Giraudo owned company for 37M (over 4x profit, not bad!). Moreover, all those teams, with the exception of Juve, are using a law (called "the spread-loss decree") that allows spreading losses over a longer period of time. This is how it was explained: Say I pay Totti 15M in 3 years, the losses are 5M per year per 3 years. With this law I can spread them over 10 years instead of 3, so that my yearly losses are only 1.5 instead of 5. The problem of this "law" (used by all teams except Juve) is that it's an unfair competition with the other European teams and it's likely to be deemed unlawful by the EC and could be repealed. This would make things very dire for all teams (except Milan and Inter whose owners have really deep pockets). To make matters even worse, in 2004 a new UEFA law will be in place, and those teams that don't pay their players every month or whose balance sheet is in the red won't be allowed to participate to UEFA competitions (can you imagine Roma winning the title and then being banned from the CL for its balance sheets in the red?). Finally today's news is that Baraldi is resigning from Lazio (whose financial status is pretty horrific despite the hype).
Gotta get those potential investors interested I guess. And personally I think the financial management in the Juventus franchise is superior even to that of my "Provincial Government" lol ... A well balanced team financially I must say; as to those teams that are struggling heavily I suppose it wouldn't be too outrageous if someone bought them (there shares are a little cheap right now) because we all know that the business in Serie A is probably one of the best things to invest in the entire country of Italy. Roma (for ex. would not be in CL in an extreme case like if they were convicted of tax fraud or financial fraud) but otherwise there wouldn't be any sreal reason as to why teams like Lazio and Roma cant survive this financial crisis and prevail in the CL?