Villarreal budget over €100m

(If you want to read the original article, it’s here)

Sr. Roig’s son gave an interview to the local paper, EPM, where he talked about many things....here are the highlights, I didn’t translate it all. As many of you who follow Villarreal know, a lot of these nuts-and-bolts items are very important, but don’t get talked about much. And if you are fairly new to following Villarreal, you’ll learn a lot about how the club is set up. (Sr. Roig is the president of course and has been since 1997; Sr. Llaneza, the vice president, has actually been there longer, since 1993! Sr. Roig’s son, who gave the interview, joined the club in 2005 and has the title of "consejero delegado", which is basically CEO, or executive director.

(1) Front office changes: of course, the major one was Antonio Cordón, who had been at Villarreal since 1999, leaving for Monaco, but also Luis Rodriguez left for Atleti. The scouting area has been restructured somewhat: Pablo Ortells is the director of football (Cordón’s old position), Fernando Segui is the new coordinator of the technical secretariat (i.e. the scouting group) which includes five scouts who will travel to scout players, and others who study film of leagues we usually don’t visit.

(2) That group—the technical secretariat—is where decisions on signing players are made, though subject of course to "market conditions". Reading between the lines, (1) the new structure will make it more difficult for a coach to demand a particular player above all else (though it could still happen) (2) although Sr. Roig Negueroles did not say so, while the coach will have some influence on the system, it would be difficult for us to hire a coach and give him control over signings (3) ultimately, everything has to fit into the budget, regardless. (BTW, Marcos Senna is ‘beginning to work with the secretariat’).

(3) Eric Bailly’s sale was a milestone for us: cost below €8m, sold for €36m which could become €40m with incentives. We did not want to sell him, but Man Utd kept increasing its offer both to the player and to us, so...

(4) Sergio Moya is responsible for the cantera, has two full-time and one part-time ‘technicians’ reporting to him, and a network of 18 scouts in Spain.

(5) Budget: We should receive about €57m in TV money, and Villarreal is very satisfied with the new deal. We got €16.5m from the Europa League last season and this year, in spite of not making it to the Champions League proper, we have budgeted for €20m. That is because we do get €3m from playing in the playoff round, plus a share of the market pool (I think 10% of the Spanish share). Overall, the budgeted income is around €115m, and the expenses will be "over €100m". Our net from player sales was €54m in, €60m out, so exactly how the expenses are treated affects our net income for accounting purposes, but the bottom line is Villarreal has no debt, pays its taxes on time, and is not losing money.

(6) El Madrigal: The stadium remodel should be completed by January (next year they want to expand the VIP area, but I expect that will happen over the summer). New lights (LED’s) have to be installed yet. As for the stadium name, Sr. Roig N said "there are several alternatives and we are considering them".

(7) International schools: Villarreal has held talks with groups in Qatar, USA and India to export its cantera model (apparently the USA negotiations involve someone in Miami) and it might happen, but from the article it’s clear Villarreal is going to demand a good degree of control over any such project—we have no interest in just lending our name to a concept and walking away. Anything will be awhile off, as he said we are "formulating market studies and feasibility plans".

(8) The current team and CL playoff: The CL playoff was tough primarily because of our injuries (and Sansone not being available), plus the tough draw. We have a good team, hard to know if it’s our best, hard to know what would have happened if we’d not had the coaching change....we do hope that in the coming years we won’t have so many changes to the team in one summer!!

(9) La Liga: Sr. Roig Negueroles was very complimentary of Javier Tebas, stating La Liga has improved more in economic terms in the last three years than the last twenty. Debts have been halved, the sale of the TV rights has improved things, etc.

(10) Attendance at El Madrigal has been good, 18,000 per match. He also paid tribute to Eibar, another club with a small catchment area that is consolidating its position in the Primera.

(11) He was asked "what decision do you regret the most?" and his answer was interesting—he said ‘for a time, Villarreal was exceeding its means. When you have to sell a player, that tells you something is wrong, and that happened to us the year before the relegation’. When we were relegated, of course, we had to sell even more, but we managed that well. "I regret we did not rectify things sooner to arrive at the current management model", he said. Now Villarreal spends only what it makes and does not have "castles in the air".

(12) As far as Marcelino and Escribá: bottom line is coaches come and coaches go—it’s hard for coaches to stay a long time at one club, it’s an exhausting job. But the club continues on.