Inter find themselves in a situation where, if they are to fail to get back into top four and miss out on Champions League qualification for next season, it will be nothing less than a financial disaster for the club.

The reason for this, today’s print edition of Turin-based newspaper Tuttosport argue via FCInterNews, is that Nerazzurri owners Suning have made two very consequential errors, namely building an aging squad on high wages and putting the club in major debt.

For any club of Inter’s size, failing to bring in the revenues that come from the Champions League is going to be a problem, something that is inevitable given how top clubs are all but forced into budgeting for the earnings of participating in the competition to keep up with rivals.

However, for the Nerazzurri it would would be more than just a problem.

The truth is that if Inter suffer the steep drop-off from the expected Champions League revenues to the earnings that would come from the Europa League or Europa Conference League, they will find themselves having to completely change their plans.

This could mean having to sell a top player like Andre Onana, whilst there would be a risk of losing Alessandro Bastoni or Hakan Calhanoglu if the money is not there to extend their contracts.

On the pitch, this can be blamed on the miserable run of form over the last month which has seen the Nerazzurri drop a shocking fourteen points out of fifteen to fall behind AC Milan, Lazio, and Roma.

However, off the pitch there are two decisive blunders which have made it so that the team are at such a risk of being hit as hard as they are.

One is that the squad has an average age of 28.8 and the second-highest wage bill in Serie A.

Whilst it could be argued that Inter’s squad is fairly well-put-together even in spite of their bad form in the league, particularly considering their outstanding form in the Champions League, what it is not built for is weathering the loss of Champions League revenues.

The fact that there are so many players over thirty like Stefan de Vrij, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Danilo D’Ambrosio, and Edin Dzeko means that it is all but inevitable that each summer the club face decisions about whether to extend contract of players on high wages, or invest in replacements.

Without the financial wiggle room afforded by the massive sums that come in from UEFA for playing in the Champions League, this dilemma could become virtually fatal – something which would not be the case were the squad built differently.

Then, there is the debt that Inter have racked up under Suning’s ownership.

Since the start of the pandemic, the financial situation has become dire at the Nerazzurri, and the owners temporarily stabilized it with a huge €275 million loan from Oaktree Capital in 2021, which has given them the cash to inject to fund the club’s operations.

What this means is that the Nerazzurri owerns must repay €350 million next May, with interested included, whilst the club’s debt is now in the form of a €415 “junk bond.”

This is the main source of the Nerazzurri’s constantly reported need to bring in cash from the transfer market, and without the big windfall that comes from the Champions League, there are huge questions about how they can deal with the ongoing debt issues.