Soccer Passing Drills

With a great recent record in domestic soccer, a team of highly-paid and talented international players and despite being one of the world’s richest men, Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich still faces a serious task over the next few seasons. Debt is the spectre which haunts Chelsea at the end of every season and despite the club owners generosity in writing off large portions of the clubs debt, resolving this will be the key issue for Roman Abramovich.

While Chelsea’s massive soccer merchandise machine may bring in cash, as will the transfer of a player or two away from the club, advertising deals and prize money, the fact is that Chelsea’s expenditure far exceeds the revenue generated and so far it has been the owner that has absorbed these debts. With UEFA adopting stringent new rules for 2012, meaning that all participating teams in their competitions must be run within strict financial guidelines, Chelsea must find a way to reduce their debt while staying in European soccer’s elite.

Addressing this thorny problem began last summer when several first team players were allowed to change clubs. Players like Michael Ballack, Joe Cole and Deco did not have their contracts renewed while Ricardo Carvalho was transfered to Real Madrid and manager Carlo Ancelotti chose not to replace them with renowned stars, instead promoting youth from within the club’s junior ranks. These cuts certainly reduced the wage bill, but other measures may still need to be taken in order to reduce the debts still further.

Mr Abramovich’s ultimate objective for Chelsea is that they become not only the biggest name in the English league, but European and World Soccer too. Depending on your personal opinion, this claim is currently held by either of the La Liga giants Barcelona or Real Madrid, or Chelsea’s Premier League rivals Manchester United, and the reason why Chelsea have been unable to match these three giants of the beautiful game is due to two main reasons: The size of their home stadium in comparison to the size of the competing big three and the fact that Chelsea lags behind the other three in terms of merchandise sold worldwide.

For several years now, there have been consistent rumours that there are plans to address the limited size of Stamford stadium in the near future. Speculation has it that Stamford Bridge may soon be condemned to being part of Chelsea’s history, rather than the cornerstone of their future. Soon, Chelsea may be playing their home games at a 60,000 capacity purpose designed stadium close to the current Stamford Bridge and it is hoped that this new ground will generate the revenue and give the club the status it needs to truly rival the world’s soccer elite.

The proposed new stadium and its higher capacity will have a instantaneous, positive effect on resolving Chelsea’s financial problems. The bigger stadium, provided fans pay for the additional seats, will provide Chelsea with an increased return on their gate receipts for home games. In turn, this added income will help reduce the strain the club feels from its annual debt and means that Chelsea is better prepared to meet the new UEFA rules, which are coming into effect in 2012. Also, building a new ground will enable Chelsea to negotiate a lucrative sponsorship deal over the name of the ground, as fellow Premier League team Arsenal did when selling the naming rights to Emirates stadium.

Merchandising sales could also be improved by a new stadium, more seating means more fans and this will have a knock on effect in other unused markets, notably those in East Asia and North America.

The long term future of Chelsea relies on the owner investing his resources not just in world class players, but in the home turf of the club. If Chelsea truly do harbor ambitions to overtake the others and become the world’s biggest soccer club, then upgrading or moving from Stamford Bridge ground is the first and most important step they must take in order to achieve that.

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