SportSport.ba

"Fans care about winning trophies, not selling the most shirts"

Eugenio Martínez Bravo, the president of fans group 'Plataforma Blanca' spoke to AS about the management of Madrid, and if the club could become a PLC.

What would you have said at the General Assembly if you had been there?

I would have focused separately on the financial aspect and the sporting aspect.

Let’s begin with the financial aspect

I would have said the same thing I’ve been saying since 2009 but which people are only starting to listen to now. La Plataforma Blanca maintains that Real Madrid’s 541 million euro debt is extortionate. Club members shouldn’t be confused about it, that is the size of the club’s liabilities, what the club owes. The club still owes money to the companies that built the Valdebebas training ground. And as professor Gay de Liébana has explained, the club’s working balance, the difference between what Madrid is owed and what the club owes in the short term, is no less than 100 million euros. And it’s vital that that figure is positive. And that’s been the case since 2009, and I cannot understand why Florentino, an engineer of finances, hasn’t wanted to sort it out and begin reducing the debt. It makes me suspicious that we could be moving towards becoming a PLC.

Do you think the club will become a PLC?

I have no other explanation, because he [Florentino] isn’t stupid and nearly all of Madrid’s debt is short term. It’s more normal for the level of long term debt to be higher. And as far as I know, the banks haven’t refinanced the debt with Madrid, nor has he solved the negative working balance. Therefore, either Florentino wants the club to become a PLC as the only solution and is provoking that by stockpiling debt so that one day he owns the club. And I will fight to the point of exhaustion to ensure that doesn’t happen, to make sure the club continues to belong to its members. On top of that, he wants to spend 400 million euros on renovating the stadium.

Are you worried that the club’s earnings could fall?

This only worries me relatively for now. What I’m really worried about is the leverage.

Go on..

When you have much more external debt than ****. A normal level of leverage is 30% of external debt over your own ****, and Madrid has a leverage of 60%. They owe much more to third parties than is usual. It’s staggering.

Why is that?

Because the club pays out insane amounts for players. In a few instances the club has sold well, like with Özil, which was for necessity, but it was also like throwing rocks against the club’s own sporting structure. And then there are disastrous cases like Kaká, who is the worst signing in the history of Real Madrid. 67 million euros thrown down the drain.

And what if the club starts to earn less money from television?

I was getting to that. Let’s see what Brussels makes of the issue, it’s looking into it. I’m worried about how the share of the pie of earnings is developing. An important burden is falling onto the club members. To be a member with a season ticket is now very expensive. And then the club’s profits are 30 million euros. I’d rather have no profit, because here we don’t have to share dividends. Dividends for me are trophies. That is what the fans want, we don’t care about selling the most shirts. That’s why Florentino’s short term vision is exhausted.

What would you propose?

I would opt for a philosophy based on a long term sporting vision that would return us to the path of winning trophies, and decrease our spending. We have to sign players for sporting reasons and build a project. Del Bosque, Pellegrini , Mourinho and Ancelotti can’t all be bad coaches. Let’s see if the real bad guy is the one who appointed them all. That is what concerns the average fan, not being top of Deloitte’s Money League.

Raul_64 je napisao/la:Nema sluzbene objave visine transfera , ne znam o cemu doticni prica
jedini put kada je RM spomenuo iznos je valda bilo u slucaju Illarramendia..

Raul_64 je napisao/la:Nisam sigurno.
To ce biti ovi sto se pozivaju na RMTV , kao glasnogovornika Reala
valda su Tv kanal i sluzbenu stranicu stavili pod jedno.

Postao/la Raul_64

RMTV je potvrdio da je transfer 91 milion , na transfemarktu je bio 100 miliona do juce mislim kada su prepravili