When FC Helsingør’s professional department was converted into a public limited company, the new group of owners and the original association began talking about exactly how the work around the first team and the youth department should be divided. Negotiations over the details began in earnest in late autumn and have now fallen into place. A formal agreement has been entered into, which, among other things, sets the annual amount that the public limited company undertakes to support the talent work with, sets how the profit from player sales is distributed between the public limited company and the association, and sets the framework for future cooperation.
Director Jim Kirks is happy with the agreement:
– The relegation in the summer put a great deal of pressure on the finances and made it difficult for us to fully live up to the ambitions we had for the youth work when we arrived. But this agreement lays a solid foundation for future cooperation between the two parts of the club. Much of what we have agreed will continue the work we are already doing on a daily basis, and we will continue to share office and everyday life with the staff in the youth setup.
Chairman of the board Jordan Gardner acknowledges that the negotiations were at times tense:
– As a starting point, I would like to emphasize that in the American ownership group we are pleased with the agreement that has now been negotiated into place. We are proud that we can continue to make a significant financial contribution to the youth department with this agreement, and help ensure the long-term sustainability of the youth department at the club. The agreement creates peace within the club so that the two parts of the club can continue the work with the senior team and the youth department respectively going forward.
We are therefore also a little puzzled that the association chose to take a discussion public that in our view had been closed internally. In the ownership group, we had a clear intention to continue the work with the youth unchanged when we took over the club. An intention we also publicly promised to live up to, but we have had to conclude that the very large financial burden caused by relegation to 2. Division has made it impossible for us to live up to those promises to the extent we had hoped.
Therefore, our negotiations about the future of the youth department from our side have also had the starting point that it was not exempt from the cuts made in all other parts of the club. A starting point that has not been met with much understanding from some of the very same people in the association who had been responsible for placing the club in the financial situation it was in.
The agreement sets out very clear guidelines for the details of the cooperation between the youth and senior sides, and gives both parties a responsible financial foundation to work from. We are sorry if the association on their side feels that we have not taken responsibility for the youth department. I can only state that with the new agreement, the public limited company FC Helsingør remains the largest contributor to the youth department, and that in our friendly match against Fremad Amager on Saturday we had six players from the academy on the pitch.
In addition, I can state that the only ones who have for real contributed financially to the club’s continued existence over the last year, including the youth department, have been the American ownership group, as well as the many regular fans in Helsingør who have bought shares in the club. Without them and us there would not have been a club and a youth department to negotiate about at all.
We see this agreement as a strong and good foundation for future work between the company and the association, and hope that we can now close the discussions and look ahead, for the good of the whole club.
