Dutch football misses many opportunities for foreign investors. It is too difficult to buy a club due to the strict licensing rules, says Wouter Gudde.
The former director of FC Groningen knows an investor who wanted to take over Vitesse. “He said: it seems like I’m a criminal. He had a club in the top 25 of Europe and has billions in assets,” Gudde told reporters Football International. “The funny thing is: buying a Dutch club is super difficult, but once you are in, you can do everything that God has forbidden. And create monstrosities with a loss of ten million every year.”
Gudde is now active at Burton Albion FC, in the fourth level of England. That club has been taken over by a Scandinavian investment group led by the billionaire behind clothing group H&M. “It has gone awry here in England, because there are few healthy clubs and everyone is dependent on what happens to the owner. What they have done well: use the owners’ mechanism to take the infrastructure and scouting to a higher level. Brighton and Brentford are good examples, at the top Manchester City and Liverpool.”
The Netherlands is missing the point in this, the football director sees. “There is a lot of money available; the Netherlands does not benefit from it. It’s a shame. I’m waiting for Tony Bloom from Brighton or Mathew Benham from Brentford to join the Eredivisie. With the exception of a few top clubs, it’s all very close together. How great would it be to be the only club to scout in a completely different way than the rest?”
