SPORTING PROJECT EVALUATION

WHO WE ARE
Four Nations Football Consulting (4NFC) is a boutique football consulting company founded by
experienced professionals, who hail from Europe, Latin America, Middle East & Africa. Coming from
different nations, we provide a global reach, as well as a wealth of business experience and football
knowledge, and a broad network of partners, including football clubs and sports related institutions.

HOW DO WE DO WORK
Through our expertise and throughout our consulting process, we aim to provide our clients with all
the tools necessary to succeed on and off the pitch, ensuring a strong value proposition. To that
end, we build all our business proposals together with the main decision makers, guiding our clients
during the thinking, planning, execution, and follow-up processes.

WHAT DO WE OFFER
We offer a wide range of services, covering areas such investments, revenue generation, strategic
planning and international expansion, fan engagement, youth academy development or squad
planning and financial management, which we consider are key pillars for the clubs. Our team has a
wealth of experience working on high-profile projects across the globe, as well as a range of
skills that allows us to cover most of the work necessary during this type of projects, from a financial,
operational, commercial, strategic, and sporting perspective.

WHERE WE ARE
In keeping with the services described, we aim to provide clients with the most comprehensive and
global football business solutions. However, this aim would not be met if we did not have a truly
global network. To provide our clients with these global solutions we have "feet on the grass" in the
following markets: Spain (HQ in Barcelona), Denmark, Portugal, UK, India, South Africa, Kenia, Egypt,
Saudi Arabia, Australia, USA, and Argentina.

HOW DO WE APPROACH THESE TYPE OF PROJECTS

The main objective to be fulfilled with our proposed consultancy services is to help the Head of
Football, Sports Director or other decision makers in professional football clubs, whose job is to define
and control the strategy around the football project and are responsible for its medium to long term
planning, providing:
• Relevant and innovative analysis and tools regarding the business side of football, with focus
on the sporting, strategic and financial areas, and their interconnection.
• Tailor-made and sustained recommendations, following a thorough analysis and
comprehension of the club’s objectives.

In doing so, we also aim to achieve the following specific objectives:

• Contribute to the decision-making on possible player sales, required reinforcements, or
renewals, backing-up with quantitative data, and combining sporting/financial indicators.
• Optimize the yearly allocated budgets with focus on big operational expenses on the sporting
side (transfers and amortizations + salaries), considering potential sporting outcomes.
• Point the transfer strategy towards specific markets to buy or sell players or potential
alliances with other partner clubs or Academies.
• Suggest the best strategy for the youth Academy to be productive and sustainable from a
sporting and financial perspective, either through internal promotion or external sale of players.

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Deu i Mata, 38, 08014, Barcelona, Spain | info@fournations.football | www.fournations.football
This kind of project is also purposed at covering these industry’s gaps:
• Lack of business analysts / controllers around the sporting area, an indispensable role in other
businesses.
• Science based and rational support to management in a hectic, emotion-led business
environment.

WHAT DO WE INCLUDE IN OUR SERVICES - METHODOLOGY FOLLOWED

For this kind of projects, we initially propose our clients the possibility of carrying out an overall
assessment of the current sporting project of the club, with the following scope of activities:
• Performance Assessment of the team, including:
o Analysis of efficiency and performance of the first team and of the main competitors in
the league, contextualizing league results with their expected offensive and defensive
performance. Ranking of clubs – “Justice Table”.
o Identification of potential clubs to target (or in some cases to avoid) when scouting for
players, trying to find talents than have greater value than perceived considering their
possible underperformance in the league.
o Evaluation of individual player performance of all the squad, in comparison to the
average of all the other players in the league per position.
• Strategic Assessment of the sporting project, including:
o Analysis of the first team squad to oversee the whole structure, evaluating the
correlation between the age of the players and the number of minutes played during
the season, their salary and amortization or their remaining contract length.
o Analysis of the transfer strategy, players that arrived or departed, evaluating their
leagues/clubs of origin/destination, the type of transfer (on loan or with a permanent
transfer), the age range, and their market valuation, identifying ways to improve
through certain strategic decisions (target specific markets, increase/reduce the
number of loans, etc.) or benefit from potential partnership agreements with other
professional clubs.
o Evaluation of the Academy Transition plan and Productivity (number of Academy
players, total playing time, etc.), analyzing also the best scouting age and the
geostrategy to find young talents nationally or internationally. Estimation of the financial
impact of the internal promotion of the players or their future sale, in comparison with
other best cases of clubs with similar size/level, objectives, or sporting strategy.
• Financial assessment of the sporting project, including:
o Analysis of the last income statements to evaluate strengths and weaknesses, and as
the impact of the salaries and amortizations on players over the ordinary revenues, as
well as the need of the club to rely on extraordinary revenues (profit on player sales)
to balance the yearly budget.
o Evaluation of the current player trading surplus and ROI in comparison with other
best cases of clubs with similar size/level, objectives, or sporting strategy.
o Forecast of revenues and expenses with different scenarios that consider the potential
sporting outcomes (e.g., relegation or participation in European competitions), to see
the impact on the available budget for the sporting project.
o Assessment of the current salary structure and total annual costs of the squad (salaries
+ amortizations) and the existing correlation with the league performance and market
value of the players.
• Conclusions and Recommendations based on the complete analysis carried out and other
international best practices.

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Deu i Mata, 38, 08014, Barcelona, Spain | info@fournations.football | www.fournations.football