Here you’ll find Milan’s yearly financial statements translated into English, from 2006 onwards. They have been translated directly as they look in the Milan accounts, though I have moved a few things around in the ‘income’ parts of each statement to reflect commercial, TV and matchday income as is commonly reported elsewhere.

You’ll also find information on debt below each statement.

EXPLANATION OF TERMS

Most the stuff on the balance sheets is fairly self-explanatory. The following is an explanation of some of the more vague terms you’ll find, along with some clarifications as to how certain values are calculated. Leave a comment below if you’d like any more added to the list.

‘Capital gains on the sale of players’

This is the income made by the club on player sales during the year. Note that this isn’t simply a case of adding up the transfer fees and sticking them in this row, but involves subtracting the player’s book value in the accounts from the transfer fee to ascertain whether the player goes down as a profit or a loss. A player’s book value is calculated with the following formula: (fee paid for the player by selling club/the number of years on the initial contract) x the number of years left on the contract at the time the player is sold.

So let’s take Zlatan Ibrahimovic as an example. He was bought for €24m on a four year contract. He was sold with two years left on that contract, so his book value at the time of the sale was: (24/4) x 2 = €12m. The accounts note that he was sold for €20m, so he actually goes down as an €8m profit (transfer fee – book value), and not a €4m loss in the accounts.

‘Amortisation of intangible assets’

Intangible assets are essentially the players. This is just the total value of amortised transfer fees for the year. Amortisation is the process of writing a player’s transfer fee down over a number of years in the accounts. The amortisation rate is calculated as follows: transfer fee/number of years on the contract he signs.

Using Ibrahimovic as an example again – his amortisation rate was €6m per year (€24m/4). You go through this process for each player, add up each player’s amortisation rate, and you get ‘amortisation of intangible assets’.

‘Capital losses on the sale of players’

This is calculated in exactly the same way as capital gains. If a player is sold for less than his book value (see example above), the loss is entered in this row on the balance sheet instead.

For example, if Ibrahimovic was sold for €10m to PSG, and not €20m, he would have gone down as a €2m capital loss in the 2012 accounts.