The pandemic hit essentially every football club over the last two years, but several in particular were hit very hard. FSG made themselves very unpopular with the attempted use of the furlough scheme, over which they backtracked, but in truth Liverpool avoided the worst effects.
Of the European royalty, Juventus, Barcelona and Inter Milan were undoubtedly rocked the most. Of course, their colossal losses weren’t just due to the effects of the pandemic. In the case of Juve and Barca, it was through reckless spending, living way beyond their means in transfer fees and wages.
In the case of Inter, it wasn’t that they were reckless in a Juventus or Barcelona kind of way, it was that they simply don’t generate the kind of revenue that allow them to compete at the highest levels of the European game. Antonio Conte’s arrival came with hefty requests from the fiery Italian in order to break the Old Lady's nine-year hegemony of the Italian game.
By the end of the 2020-21 season, Inter had indeed broken the run that Conte had himself initiated back when he was Juventus coach at the beginning of the 2010s. But that success, albeit seismic, came at a huge financial cost.
Last season, Inter Milan posted financial losses of £220m (€245m), the highest ever recorded by a Serie A side (until Juve broke it this season, having just announced losses of a staggering £228m). A year later, Inter’s losses aren’t quite as steep, but they still came in to the tune of approximately £125m (€140m).
This means that, unquestionably, a player or two will have to be sold next summer. And one of them could be midfield dynamo Nicolò Barella.
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