Bundesliga club 1. FC Köln is starting the new season with a major financial weakness.
For the new financial year, the Conference League qualifier “already had breakfast in the double-digit millions from the actual income,” said Finance Director Philipp Türoff, who came in April, in an interview with “Express”.
“So the club has already weakened for a season that should actually help to recover,” said the 46-year-old: “That’s the very first thing we want to take back as management: we have to get rid of this block and leg and make sure that the money that sponsors pay in a season is also available in the respective season.”
Türoff also explained how FC got into this situation. “The working capital loans have been used to counter the crisis,” he said: “We can no longer fall back on ample equity – there is no layer of fat that we can starve down in the face of headwinds. We have a significant amount of sponsorship income from the Already sold as an accounting measure in the future in order to remain positive in equity at all.”
In the future, the club will have to “turn over every euro five times in all transactions that we make”. The solvency is “certainly tense and needs to be managed – but together with a fee that comes in, liquidity is a task to be mastered”.