It's not just eleven players on the pitch that contribute to a club's success.
Category
đź—ž
NewsTranscript
00:00 Football is largely about two sets of people, the players and the fans.
00:06 But nowadays the game is about far more than just what happens on the pitch.
00:10 Behind the scenes huge commercial deals need to be negotiated and infrastructure needs to be maintained.
00:16 So just what does it take to run a football club?
00:19 Hello there and welcome to Football Now from Doha.
00:26 Now to some winning a football match might just come down to 11 players on the pitch.
00:30 But in recent years off the field matters have become just as important too.
00:34 If an owner doesn't invest their cash correctly things can go wrong and they can go wrong quickly.
00:39 One man who knows all about the running of a club is the former director of Dutch side Den Haag, Mohamed Hamdi.
00:45 And he gave us an insight into just how imperative it is in getting those big decisions right.
00:49 It is really important.
00:51 So to my opinion if you're looking to a football club the most important person at the football club is the head coach.
00:58 He is the main focal point for the media.
01:02 He is the person who is helping to get better results and he is also an ambassador for the team.
01:08 So that means that to my opinion the key decision should also be a head coach.
01:15 A good one, someone who fits to the philosophy of the vision of the strategy of the club.
01:20 So you can all take and have coach with a big name but if he doesn't fit into the culture of the club
01:27 or to the strategy of the long term short term vision then you have also a problem.
01:32 So there should be a fit.
01:33 So I think that the most important key decision you make and I think that is crucial, a vital point of decision making is the coach.
01:44 So now that we've heard what it takes to operate a club it is time for a case study.
01:48 Brighton and Hove Albion were promoted to the Premier League back in 2017 and they've slotted in seamlessly.
01:54 In fact this season they've qualified for European football for the first time in their history.
01:58 It has been quite the six years or so to be a Seagulls fan.
02:02 So just exactly how have they done it?
02:04 Brighton's remarkable ability to scout unpolished gems in the transfer market and sell them on for huge price tags have made them the envy of the league.
02:12 In fact all of the club's five biggest ever sales have been made in the last two years.
02:17 After arriving from Lille in 2018 the Seagulls practically doubled their money on midfield at Yves Bissouma four years later when selling him to Tottenham.
02:25 They also sold academy product Ben White to Spurs' North London rivals Arsenal for 56 million euros that year.
02:32 The contracted release clause meant they lost World Cup winner Alexis McAllister to Liverpool for a little bit less than they would have wanted in 2023.
02:40 But having only signed him for 12.5 million euros three years prior, 35 million euros still meant a healthy profit.
02:48 But by far Brighton's biggest successes in the transfer market have been their dealings with Chelsea.
02:53 Full-back Marc Cuccarello was sold to the Blues in 2022 for 47.3 million euros more than what they paid Getafe for him just 12 months earlier.
03:02 Whilst 21-year-old Ecuadorian midfielder Moises Caicedo made the same move in 2023.
03:09 The 120 million euro price that Chelsea paid was a 28 times markup on what Brighton brought him for just two years earlier and set a new British record transfer fee.
03:19 I think we've got a team unit here that plays well. I think if you've got a not just on the pitch but a team across the whole everywhere.
03:27 If it's all working well and everyone's trying to do the best for the business for the club, you know, naturally wherever you're working that's going to work.
03:36 I think that definitely is a situation at Brighton is, you know, when we do lose a player, someone's ready to step up.
03:42 It's an opportunity if you like for the next one to come along.
03:45 And I think that's what's good if you've got that recruitment looking across when you've accumulated this amount of money.
03:51 If you're putting that money into the academy since 2014, you're going to reap the rewards in 2023 almost a decade later.
03:58 Because that just tends to be how things work if you put in that amount of time and that amount of patience into it.
04:04 Yeah, impressive stuff from Brighton there. But not every club in world football has been that consistent.
04:10 In fact, it's been quite the opposite story in Germany, where one of the country's biggest clubs, FC Schalke,
04:15 are now battling towards the bottom of the second division, having only just been relegated from the Bundesliga one last year.
04:21 In fact, it's a stark contrast as well to challenging in the Champions League knockout stages just four years ago.
04:26 So how have they found themselves in this position? And more importantly, are there brighter days ahead?
04:31 Schalke's football has been remarkable. It's a combination of errors on the pitch and errors off the pitch as well.
04:40 Financially, they've been a bit of a mess throughout because they have so many good players.
04:49 Joel Matip used to play there, Kisselniak used to play there, Max Meyer, Leon Goretzka, Alexander Neubuhl.
04:55 That's a whole load of potential income that they could have made. And you could look anywhere between 110 and maybe 150 million euros they could have generated by sales.
05:07 All of those players walked out the door for free. So they lost out on everything.
05:11 They did make a penny on those players. And that's the sort of impact off the pitch that has made them poor on a whole reason.
05:21 And that's why they're down. And yeah, they are the third biggest club by membership in Germany, behind Bayern and Dortmund.
05:27 So they should be qualifying for the Champions League every year with the support they've got and with their infrastructure, superb stadium, superb training ground.
05:37 And it's not everything that could go wrong. Schalke has gone wrong so far.
05:41 So a little peek there into the do's and don'ts of successfully running a football club.
05:46 That is all the time for this week's show. Do let us know your thoughts at home using the hashtag #FootballNowBusiness.
05:51 And we'll see you at the same time next week. Bye for now.
05:54 [MUSIC]