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10 years of FIFOriginally taken from herehttp://inter1908blog.com/inter-and-suning-expectation-management/
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, but with the takeover by Suning I thought it was a good time to get some thoughts down. There’s been a lot of rumour, speculation, and crazy theories lately – some of which are joking, some of which are serious. So let’s try to break it all down.
Suning and Inter's new partnership
The first key step is to understand that CURRENTLY, we are still restrained by FFP. What that means for us, practically, is that the list of 21 (reduced from 25) players we submit for the Europa League next season can earn no additional wages over what we opened our last season on. This imposes quite a harsh limit as it means we really need to have a one-in-one-out structure. Compounding this is an additional requirement which states we have to have no net transfer spend – i.e. we spend what we make.
Not only is the FFP punishment going to limit what we can do, but regular operations under FFP will do as well. Suning will need to focus on ‘fair gain’ to our revenue – by getting new sponsorship deals (from unrelated companies), selling additional shirts, etc. The only room in which they can massively invest in Inter would be to build a new stadium, but with the Italian bureaucracy I wouldn’t expect this to happen on any accelerated timescale.
The wage imposition from FFP probably means that some of our higher earning fringe players should look to move on – players like Palacio, Melo, Ranocchia, even perhaps as far as JJ and Carrizo. Reducing wages on fringe players and increasing the wages spent on the first team is an obvious way we can improve our quality.
We’ve noticed the impact of the transfer requirements already, having only signed Ever Banega and Caner Erkin on Bosman transfers so far this season. Suning will probably make some short term investments, but nonetheless, expect to see the offloading of a bigger name (i.e. Brozovic) possibly even two to make transfers happen.
In the longer term, we need to see this revenue boost I’ve talked about. I expect through negotiations with Chinese companies, reduction in interest payments in debt (at 8% we’re paying probably north of 14million euros a year on interest alone), and the Europa League to potentially open up another 40 million euros of ‘free cashflow’ – perhaps only 25-30 million additional revenue – but this would already be quite powerful for us.
In the longer term, the big thing I really want is the new stadium. That alone could generate perhaps 50 or 70 million euros extra revenue by not having to skimp money out to the City council, and hopefully the boosted attendances and higher end box revenue of a new stadium. Commercial partnerships I would expect to really pick up on a 1-3 season timescale, giving them the chance to negotiate with new partners and start to really show value add for us.
Most importantly, perhaps, is better leverage of our star players. Nagatomo, whilst not a particularly great player for us at the moment, still has a very popular following in Asia, and it shocks me that we’ve never leveraged this to do a tour of Japan (For example). I would NOT expect to see a sudden income of Asian players – giving our two non-EU limit – but perhaps the right opportunity at the right time could make a good deal for us.
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, but with the takeover by Suning I thought it was a good time to get some thoughts down. There’s been a lot of rumour, speculation, and crazy theories lately – some of which are joking, some of which are serious. So let’s try to break it all down.
Suning and Inter's new partnership
The first key step is to understand that CURRENTLY, we are still restrained by FFP. What that means for us, practically, is that the list of 21 (reduced from 25) players we submit for the Europa League next season can earn no additional wages over what we opened our last season on. This imposes quite a harsh limit as it means we really need to have a one-in-one-out structure. Compounding this is an additional requirement which states we have to have no net transfer spend – i.e. we spend what we make.
Not only is the FFP punishment going to limit what we can do, but regular operations under FFP will do as well. Suning will need to focus on ‘fair gain’ to our revenue – by getting new sponsorship deals (from unrelated companies), selling additional shirts, etc. The only room in which they can massively invest in Inter would be to build a new stadium, but with the Italian bureaucracy I wouldn’t expect this to happen on any accelerated timescale.
The wage imposition from FFP probably means that some of our higher earning fringe players should look to move on – players like Palacio, Melo, Ranocchia, even perhaps as far as JJ and Carrizo. Reducing wages on fringe players and increasing the wages spent on the first team is an obvious way we can improve our quality.
We’ve noticed the impact of the transfer requirements already, having only signed Ever Banega and Caner Erkin on Bosman transfers so far this season. Suning will probably make some short term investments, but nonetheless, expect to see the offloading of a bigger name (i.e. Brozovic) possibly even two to make transfers happen.
In the longer term, we need to see this revenue boost I’ve talked about. I expect through negotiations with Chinese companies, reduction in interest payments in debt (at 8% we’re paying probably north of 14million euros a year on interest alone), and the Europa League to potentially open up another 40 million euros of ‘free cashflow’ – perhaps only 25-30 million additional revenue – but this would already be quite powerful for us.
In the longer term, the big thing I really want is the new stadium. That alone could generate perhaps 50 or 70 million euros extra revenue by not having to skimp money out to the City council, and hopefully the boosted attendances and higher end box revenue of a new stadium. Commercial partnerships I would expect to really pick up on a 1-3 season timescale, giving them the chance to negotiate with new partners and start to really show value add for us.
Most importantly, perhaps, is better leverage of our star players. Nagatomo, whilst not a particularly great player for us at the moment, still has a very popular following in Asia, and it shocks me that we’ve never leveraged this to do a tour of Japan (For example). I would NOT expect to see a sudden income of Asian players – giving our two non-EU limit – but perhaps the right opportunity at the right time could make a good deal for us.
