Everything you need to know to avoid requesting something unworkable without practical results.

Summary

Audit, consultancy, due diligence, or investigation?

What is the correct approach for each problematic situation in a football club?

I will share a little experience I acquired over several years of auditing and investigating Brazilian football clubs.

We will try to replicate the entire client acceptance process, which includes determining the best practice, choosing the perfect service line approach, and understanding the problems and the demand. We must check if it is possible to provide the service and feasible to deliver it.

Let’s take a simple look at an external audit in football clubs, mandated by law and carried out annually.

Finally, we will detail the fundamental options of services provided to bring the results that every fan hopes to achieve regarding their afflictions and frustrations with their club’s management.

This thread will contain twelve issues:

This Summary and Thread’s Introduction
Client acceptance – the first barrier
The standard lame excuses
External Audit 101
The total debt obsession
“And it won’t be like an audit!”
Step by Step – Diagnosis
Step by Step – Due Diligence
Step by Step – Advisory
Step by Step – Investigations – Part 1
Step by Step – Investigations – Part 2
Finally, you can think about realizing an external audit with a Big4

Introduction

External audits are among the most significant conceptual errors in Brazilian football narratives in the 21st century.

In every moment of crisis or during electoral campaigns that become increasingly long and permanent, someone always appears to claim to realize an external audit, selling it as a magical solution, a watershed, or something essential for a club’s future.

There is a bad habit of calling any verification, examination, or use of external specialists within a football club in Brazil an audit. This misunderstanding is due to two factors: (i) the firms that provide this type of service, as a rule, have the external audit as the core business; and (ii) there is total ignorance on the part of fans, associated or not, of what an audit is and what differs from their desires.

This theme requires an explanation divided into parts.

Although I focus on the Brazilian example, it is worth noting that some of the biggest clubs in the world have already gone through this situation of external examination and inspection. Everything ended up being called an audit.

It is not a local problem of understanding; therefore, this text can guide fans in any corner of the world. Unfortunately, the level of disappointment with club management has intensified worldwide, in my view, due to social networks’ effect on catalyzing and promoting criticism. Everything is part of a “giant puzzle,” and I pretend to write about the other “pieces” over here.