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

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

STEP BY STEP: INVESTIGATIONS – PART 2

Each investigation is very peculiar. There is no pre-defined guide, and trying to present a work program on what should be done in an investigation in a text would be a shortcut to error.

However, football clubs in Brazil have a particular standardized behavior, derived from some factors:

Clubs exchange information and align practices, mainly because it is an amateur environment, where officers need to reconcile their professional and personal life with the clubs’ demands. The choice of dedicated professionals is very private and not very technical. Even the dedicated seek contact with their peers in other football clubs to determine how they proceeded with a given situation.

The amateur sports model is practically the same in every football club.

Investors, agents, and intermediaries operate in all clubs. Despite being a market with hundreds of registered professionals, half a dozen lead this segment and repeat their ways in all clubs in practice.

Thus, concerning resource deviations, we have a general guide for areas and transactions to be investigated. I will summarize this for you.

The starting point is in the formation of football players. Every fundraising process needs to be thoroughly investigated, with great attention to sharing economic rights, commissioning contracts, expenses with various fees, and especially in cases of discontinuity.

A similar approach needs to be made in the professional squad, thoroughly investigating all purchases, sales, assignments of rights, and transfers without costs, commissions, and fees. It is also necessary to pay attention to the squads’ size, as some clubs have enough athletes under contract to form up to six complete teams with reserves.

The excess of athletes under contract is one of the most significant signs of the need for research on commissioning.

The evidence found in this investigation phase may require an additional procedure for tracking assets and signs of asset incompatibility. Commissions and fees, once paid, lose track of football clubs’ accounting and financial records. As a rule, there is a need to review all clubs’ revenue and expenditure contracts.

Again, attending commissions and intermediaries, but mainly evaluating the commercial conditions, comparing them with prices practiced in the market and even that the contracted or remunerated services were effectively performed.

Background checks and screenings of everyone who receives funds from clubs also make me understand them as mandatory. Focus on potential conflicts of interest with political players from football clubs.

In this sense, it is also helpful to analyze the fairness of those who associate commercially in some way with clubs, such as sponsorship contracts, where business may not be lawful or have reputational risks. Damaging the image of a club is still an act of reckless management.

Lately, an investigative focus on gaming operating costs has become necessary. The approach is the same as described above, although the execution is more complicated because it is usually structured outside the football club’s scope.

An investigation into litigation management is also suggested. Some situations are pretty strange and require the application of some investigative procedures.

Each step will bring specific problems that will support the planning of investigation fronts for each situation. There is no way to handle all of this in this thread.

The important thing is to keep in mind that it is crucial to investigate to purge from the association the people who benefit illicitly, establish commercial relations in clear financial imbalance, and punish and disable the managers who cause losses and various errors.

Eliminate associates that cause them losses or that have closed bad contracts. The investigative process helps both the restructuring project and the longevity of the new structure to be created. And it even paves the way for the creation of the company club without any link with associative models.

The investigative effort inhibits the future action of the people of unconditional love and self-denial. The commercial environment has a filter, and relations tend to balance. It is the end of the increasingly low club with increasingly wealthy managers and agents.