Italian football underwent a major economic change recently when the decreto crescita (growth decree) was abolished by the government, but there could soon be another change that helps clubs.
According to a report from Il Fatto Quotidiano (via Milan News), football clubs in Italy could soon be enjoying the same tax advantages that they were before.
There used to be favourable circumstances for players joining Italian clubs when it came to taxation, which made it much easier for Serie A clubs to convince players to join the league rather than head elsewhere.
An extension to it was denied after a Council of Ministers meeting at Christmas, but there could soon be more movement.
The right wing Forza Italia party, which boasts Lazio president Claudio Lotito as a member, is going to introduce an amendment to the law which could see the growth decree return.
There certainly won’t be any change during the January transfer window, but they are working to have it reactivated by the time the summer 2024 transfer window begins at the end of this season.
Work could then be started on seeing whether the growth decree can be applied retrospectively for players who were signed in January 2024 by Serie A clubs.
It is pretty stupid anyways. This isn’t really an italian problem. The real problem is the ginormous inflation in football and sports overall driven by PL and maybe Saudi arabia. The money many of these players make are absurd. And basically it’s down to greed how players choose to plan their careers.
The ones who pay for all this is the consumer. Or in the case of italy part of it has been the government.
But the consumer prices for football has gone up very much i the last decades. Both what we pay to watch on tv and in the stadiums.
For example in Sweden the price to watch PL has gone up from 55 € / month to 69 € / month recently. For me who only watch Serie A the price has gone up from 7.9 € to 39 € since 2018. I don’t know if the price hike is down to PL recently selling the tv rights at a record price. But of course it has to be the consumers who pay for it. It’s no charity to run a tv station. But who gets the money from the rights? It’s the clubs and the players. Do they need all that money? Do messi really need 200 million euros a year to play football? I think he would play equally good if he only has 5 million or whatever.
Sorry long rant. I just think modern football has gone out of hand. But I actually am a bit proud of how Milan run their business. They at least have since Elliott took over tried to turn things around into a more sustainable economy. Which I hope won’t change once they get their own stadium.
Yep. Reasonable thinking. The greed of the players (and especially the agents) has gotten out of hands.
It’s Capitalism. Football worked before they flooded it with money. It’s not so much the players and agents, their demands don’t exist in a vacuum. It’s the sheer amount of money that has come into the game in the last 25-30 years. The conversion of the European Cup in the “Champions League” was the tip of the iceberg. Then came the PL. Even the World Cup is now broken. Who can afford to host one? It used to be that you just painted stadiums and got on with it. Now you have to build or completely renovate a bunch of stadiums, build “fan zones”, all this other infrastructure, nevermind the corrupt bidding process for one.
L
Prime example of how politicians always think of people’s interest first and do not pursuit any personal gains, right? 🙂