Gazidis warns football must heed the warning signs

By Andrew Warshaw in Manchester

March 2 – Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis (pictured) says European football badly needs to heed the warning signs and regulate itself to stop more clubs being plunged into chaos.
 
In a week that Portsmouth are still reeling from being the first English Premier League club to go into administration, Gazidis said it was time for all the instability to stop.

“Football is in need of self-examination,” he told the Soccerex conference.

“We are an industry that creates enormous revenues and for us to have the degree of instability that we have in the game must cause us to ask some serious questions of ourselves.

“The fundamental issue that we all face is how do we have the courage and the fortitude to control our spending in a fairly irrational environment.

“If you can manage that there’s no reason why anybody in the end can’t have a long term stable business in the end.”

UEFA are to bring in strict rules on financial fair play in three years’ time and Gazidis says it is the right idea to stop clubs overspending.

Although Arsenal have been criticised for failing to keep pace with their rivals in terms of player purchases, their financial model is viewed as one the most healthy throughout Europe.

“The fundamental issue is spending,” said Gazidis who welcomed moves by UEFA to impose stricter regulations on clubs, which has the backing of the influential European Clubs Association (ECA), representing 100 clubs throughout Europe.

Gazidis said that tighter rules and better run clubs would also attract “more sensible owners” to the game.

“I think that we are in an industry that has incredible potential for growth.

“But there are serious issues we have to address within the game so that we are not just creating revenue, but we are also creating value, that is the challenge.”

According to the annual survey by accountancy firm Deloitte released on Tuesday, the combined revenues of the top 20 clubs grew by €26 million (£23 million/$35 million) to over €3.9 billion (£3.4 billion/$5.2 billion) in 2008-2009, amid the global economic downturn.

Gazidis added: “Soccer is still very attractive to new owners and with the new UEFA rules on debt in place I think we will get even more, sensible, responsible owners in the future.”

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