By Andrea Caropreso
Index
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About twenty years ago, few would have believed that an inherently economic term like “capital gain” would become commonly used even among football fans—people who, generally speaking, do not deal with financial aspects every day. But why has the term plusvalenza become so widely used? Already at the end of the 1990s, financial aspects linked to football began to be discussed, with the result that capital gains became a way to understand whether a club had actually made a profit or not from a sale. This element is now of paramount importance for clubs, which need to comply with strict financial constraints.
What is a capital gain and why does it matter to clubs?
In football, a capital gain is, quite simply, the profit a club makes from selling a player for a price higher than his book value. Therefore, one should not use the original purchase price as the reference point, but rather the value at which the player is recorded in the accounts for the current year. To illustrate this, let’s take the much-discussed case of Dusan Vlahovic with Juventus.
The Serbian striker was purchased in January 2022 by the Bianconeri for a fee exceeding €75 million including bonuses. However, today, three and a half years after his purchase, Juve would only need to collect around €20 million to avoid recording a capital loss in the accounts. This is because amortization has reduced the former Fiorentina player’s book value to just over €19 million. It is therefore easy to understand why capital gains are almost vital for clubs (especially Italian ones).
In order to comply with certain constraints imposed by both the domestic league and UEFA, it is essential not to have an excessively large budget deficit. Recording a capital loss would worsen the financial statements, forcing the club to recover the lost resources from other sources. Sometimes, a capital increase or the sale of a star player can help, but these are measures every club would prefer to avoid.
The financial situation of Italian clubs
Many Italian clubs have fragile accounts and are forced to rely on capital gains (often before June 30th, when the fiscal year closes) to balance their books. In the past, this has happened to Inter, Roma and Juventus. In the case of the Nerazzurri, for example, during Zhang’s presidency, it was not uncommon to see major sales take place in the final days of the fiscal year in order to correct a negative balance. One example is Hakimi’s sale to PSG for €60 million plus bonuses, which generated a capital gain of €28 million after a year of amortization.
Similar transactions were also carried out by Juventus, which—especially during the COVID years—resorted to the capital gains loophole (later judged fictitious) to fix a disastrous budget weighed down by high salaries and low revenues due to pandemic closures. Transfers that the Bianconeri are still paying for today include situations like that of Arthur, who arrived from Barcelona in 2020 and was valued at over €70 million in a swap deal with Pjanic.
The risks
Relying almost entirely on generating capital gains for a clubs survival is a high-risk strategy. As several recent cases have shown, it can happen that certain signings are made more for financial reasons than for actual technical needs, with the risk that players fail to adapt to the new environment. This creates a vicious cycle, like a dog chasing its tail.
The signing of a player not expressly requested by the coach—even if talented, as happened with Arthur or Douglas Luiz at Juventus—may temporarily plug budget holes but risks becoming a long-term burden. If in the future the clubs are forced to sell that player at a price lower than the remaining book value (net of amortization), the result will be another deficit. In practice, it is a boomerang: a temporary improvement in the accounts that, like dust hidden under the carpet, risks re-emerging later with even worse consequences.
By Andrea Caropreso
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