An audit, consulting, and diligence guide to troubled Football Clubs

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

Finally, you can think about realizing an external audit with a Big4.

After completing several previous phases, you may have an environment with sufficient internal controls. Your accounting reflects something very close to the reality of your financial situation. The debt was restructured, and there is some predictability in your cash flow.

By removing and punishing harmful elements in your club and eliminating other associations detrimental to the club’s image and finances, there is a real opportunity to hire a Big4 to perform the external audit of your club.

It is necessary to verify that any conflict created will prevent any Big4 that previously participated from being also responsible for the annual audit of financial statements during the entire restructuring and transformation process.

But I will tell you a secret in this final part!

If a club did all its homework right, being audited by a Big4 becomes almost irrelevant. Unless you can combine the effects of brand exposure with the actual fee amount, it may not be worth following that Big4 mantra. After all, they tend to charge much higher values than midsize companies.

In a high compliance scenario, transparency, and an active and independent fiscal council, Big4 is just to icing on the cake, so much so that several top European clubs do not hire Big4 as an external auditor. Some for obvious reasons, others for a simple cost option.

What cannot be allowed is that these European examples are used by chaotic amateur management, as we have observed with some frequency.

A football club turns each fan into a potential inspector with adequate transparency and almost continuous monitoring in practice. All this shouting for Big4 stems from the opacity of the management of Brazilian clubs.

I hope everyone now understands the real meaning of an external audit and the need for insolvent or poorly managed clubs. It will allow your claims and complaints to be more objective, eliminating charlatan managers’ chance of winding up with lame excuses.

I am available to all to clarify any doubts. Use my social networks or the comments section.