José Pereira da Costa: Hardest part was funding for UEFA checks | OneFootball

In an interview with the website zerozero, FC Porto’s financial director painted a harsh picture of the club’s reality in 2024. He described a club with a structural imbalance—recurring revenues insufficient to cover costs—that is accumulating losses, debt, and a suffocating financial burden.

The scale of the problem was laid out bluntly:

And this burden proves devastating when compared to recurring revenues:

In practical terms: a significant portion of revenues is consumed by interest payments before even covering daily operations. For a club with European ambitions, this is not just an inconvenient cost—it is a competitive weakness.

The most critical moment, according to the financial director, resulted in non-compliance with UEFA’s regulations regarding solvency and “overdue payables” (salaries, taxes, social security, and essential payments). At that point, the scenario almost turned into a nightmare:

Worse still: the new administration took office at the end of May and, the following month, faced a decisive UEFA audit:

The financial director describes this phase as the most complicated, because another failure could have resulted in a European suspension with “dramatic” impact. The solution was to secure immediate liquidity and negotiate with creditors:

For the fan, the message is clear: when it comes to management, it’s not just theory. In 2024, what was at stake was not only the market, but also participation in Europe—and the sporting and reputational damage that could result from that.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.