Coaching Youth Soccer

Despite their outstanding domestic record of late, a team full of World renowned stars and a bank account that most teams can only dream of, Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich faces a complex issue over the next few years. The issue facing the Chelsea owner is that despite his vast personal wealth and his willingness to spend it on his club, every season Chelsea finish it is likely to see a major debt accrued on the clubs balance sheet.

Maintaining Chelsea’s investment in it’s youth squad, signing new players as well as the large amounts paid to existing players in the squad as part of their contract agreements are costs which cannot be completely offset by the sale of soccer merchandise, ticket sales, player sales and corporate sponsorship deals. With UEFA adopting strict new rules by 2012, meaning that all participating teams in their competitions must be running within stringent financial rules, Chelsea needs to find a way to reduce their debt while staying in European soccer’s elite.

Addressing this little problem began last summer when several first grade players were allowed to change clubs. Michael Ballack left for Leverkusen, Deco and Juliano Belletti joined Fluminense, Joe Cole moved North to Liverpool and Ricardo Carvalho rejoined former manager Jose Mourinho at Real Madrid. These cuts certainly minimised the wage bill, but other actions still need to be taken to reduce the debts still further.

Chelsea’s owner has spent huge amounts of cash recently to help the club achieve his ambition of the Londoners being recognized as not only the best club in England, but the entire world. Depending on your opinion, this claim is currently held by either of the Spanish giants Real Madrid or Barcelona, or Chelsea’s Premier League rivals Manchester United, and the cause of Chelsea being unable to match these three giants of the world game is due to two main reasons: The size of their home stadium compared to the size of the competing big three and the fact the club trails behind the other three in terms of merchandise sold worldwide.

For several years now, there have been muted speculation that there are talks to address the limited size of Stamford over the next few seasons. Speculation has it that Stamford Bridge may soon be condemned to being part of Chelsea’s history, rather than the cornerstone of their future. While no specific details have been confirmed by any sources at Chelsea, rumours are circulating that Mr Abramovich is considering moving the club into a brand new stadium, of at least 60,000 capacity, and such a move is a must if Chelsea are realistically hoping to claim the status of the world’s biggest club.

The switch to a new ground would have great and instant effects on resolving Chelsea’s financial standing. The larger capacity, provided fans pay for the additional seats, will provide Chelsea with a much bigger return on their gate income for home games. This additional revenue will place the club in a better position to adhere to the new UEFA guidelines, which are slated to be implemented by 2012, by rapidly increasing the amount of money the club can hope to generate in each of their home games throughout the season.

A new ground will also give Chelsea the opportunity to sell the naming rights of the stadium for a considerable sum of money, as neighbors Arsenal did when they built and named their own new stadium after main sponsors Emirates Airlines.

A new ground would also have the benefit of improving levels of merchandising sales that the club makes as the new ground would give the club increased publicity, especially in the far larger customer markets in Asia and America.

If Chelsea is to be successful on their long term goals, now is the right time to invest their owners cash on the club’s infrastructure, instead of on player wages and inflated transfer fees. If Mr Abramovich is ready to upgrade Chelsea onto the same level as Real Madrid, Barcelona and Manchester United, then it is required he invests his money into a bigger stadium as that is the next step that this great London team must take in order to achieve the levels of greatness to which they aspire.