What makes a club set certain limits on players' purchases, contracts value and period, when to construct a stadium, and what technology to adapt into the club? The answer is that these things along with many others are determined within what is called a football project.
Origin
The term football project didn't come out of nowhere. It is the result of the corporatization of football clubs. The term project is obviously a business term.
What is a project?
A project is an undertaking, carried out individually or collaboratively and possibly involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim.
Simply put, there are goals set by management to be achieved within a specific period of time. It also needs to be achieved in a specific manner done by a person or group of people setting up the mechanism and steps for it.
Goals of a project
It is very easy to set on to build a bridge within a specific period with an allocated budget as there little variables. However, in football, these corporatized clubs noticed that it is hard linking the project to match results.
Football matches have too many variables to be prepared for, a referee can make a mistake, a key player could get injured, or simply face a luckier team.
Clubs no longer have the project of winning the league or champions league within a specific number of years. Instead, they have
The basic triangle of football projects
The triangle is made up of three sides, sport, marketing, and business transactions. This triangle is the life of every football club, no part of it is allowed to be prioritized over the other.
If the sport aspect is more prioritized it could lead to a massive amount of debt, Barcelona is a great example of that.
If business transactions hold priority over sport and marketing, the club will decline in ranking sports-wise and will be harder to market. Like what happened in Arsenal.
That balance in the triangle is essential to ensure a club continues to grow.
Sporting goals
Sporting goals could include goals like winning the league or champions league. But clubs don't only see it that way, we see it often in the news that certain club owners don't care about winning titles, fans do.
There are different standards to sporting goals now:
- How many players do you promote from your academy each year
- How many under 23 players do you have playing in the first team each year
- The style of football the club aims to maintain.
- The main plan and the B plan
The latter two are important as clubs now find it unacceptable for a new manager to come and change half the team.
Transfer policies
Here is where sporting goals start getting mixed with the other two. Decisions like
- How much is spent on contract renewals
- The age limit of players bought in
- Number of players per nationalities
- How many years are given in a contract renewal do players of certain ages get
These mechanics are done often to satisfy different aspects such as marketing like we saw in Real Madrid signing James. Or business transactions related as we see in Wolverhampton signing a lot of Portuguese players.
Business goals
Business goals are centered around one specific process
- How much is a club's income
- How much should you spend on it
The totality of the two should be profit. The profit itself is complicated, it can be set yearly, or per number of years. Profit should be at a specific number, and it won't just be a profit.
A profit is also planned to be spent in specific ways in specific places.
- Medical facilities
- Youth development
- Technologies
Multiple sources of income
Part of any business goals set is that should never rely on a singular source of income such as ticket sales or a certain sponsor. That's why we see clubs such as Manchester United proudly state that they are sponsored by more than 70 different partners. One of the goals is also to increase the number of sponsors from 30 to 35 for example.
Marketing goals
When it comes to marketing it is quite simple to understand it thanks to social. The marketing team aims to increase the number of followers and interactions on social media platforms for their respective clubs.
Some clubs also pay special attention to the number of articles written about them in global papers and news sites. Also, Google searches related to them. For example, if there are more Google searches for Liverpool than Chelsea or Arsenal then that's an indication of rising in popularity.
Google searches also indicate to the clubs where they should focus. Also, many clubs take the marketing team's advice and attempt to create stories about themselves to be covered by the media more. This includes things like charity work.
Marketing goals also include buying players from a certain region to increase popularity there, also keeping track of how many people visited the museum, how many taken a stadium tour, how many purchased products from the club's official store, and what kind of product.
Time period
There are sporting goals, business goals, and marketing goals. That triangle is tied to a specific time period. When RB Leipzig was founded, the goal wasn't to purchase available players and skyrocket to Bundesliga. An eight years plan was put forth.
The plan was to get promoted and eventually get a comfortable spot in the Bundesliga by the end of the eight years. The accuracy of the project in all the departments of the club triangle was on point.
By the end of the 8 years project, RB Leipzig had already started qualifying to the UCL, kept the player's age average at a certain point, purchased and invested in talents, and made profits. All while creating a wide range scouting network.
So when you hear the term (football project) said by players, pundits, sportswriters, and managers. This is what it refers to.