FC Twente posted a 7 million euro profit on player sales, but the operating business is losing 3 million

On the day FC Twente published its 2026/26 financial report, I kept reading one line over and over: a net profit of 7 million euros. For a mid-tier Eredivisie club, seven million euros is the kind of number that lets an accounting department sleep well. But on the line just above it, the operating result read minus 3 million euros. A 7 million profit, a 3 million operating loss — the two figures do not contradict each other in accounting terms; they only contradict each other in substance. That profit was not generated by the stands, not generated by European prize money, but generated in one place only: the transfer market. The louder the stands, the easier the truth hides. And once the noise of a season painted with pretty numbers has died down, the financial report begins to speak its real truth.

Who is FC Twente in the Eredivisie picture? They are not in the PSV, Ajax or Feyenoord group — the group that can keep players and spend for the title. Twente sit a tier below, alongside AZ and Utrecht: strong enough to fight for a European place, not wealthy enough to keep their best players when a bigger league comes knocking. The newly published 2026/26 report lays out the finances of exactly such a club, and it deserves to be read as a case study rather than a celebratory press release.

Twente's revenue for the period reached 48 million euros, down 13.7 million on 2026/25 — roughly 22%. Total costs stood at 51 million euros, down by a mere 1.1 million. The operating result was therefore minus 3 million euros. What dragged revenue down? Prize money evaporated by 10.6 million euros, and matchday revenue fell by 2.9 million. Both revolve around a single variable: European qualification. Twente missed the league phase of a European competition in the reported season, and the price of that miss shows up bluntly on the balance sheet.

But stopping there would mean missing the most interesting part. Twente's post-tax profit was still positive, at 7 million euros. Its source sits in the transfer-profit line: 12.7 million euros. Add that 12.7 million to the minus 3 million operating loss, subtract a further 2.4 million in tax, and you land at roughly 7 million — the figures reconcile with surprising precision, and that is a sign of seriously managed books.

The core question to dissect: whom did Twente sell, and how? During the reporting period the club put a long list on the market: Sem Steijn, Carel Eiting, Mitchell van Bergen, Michel Vlap, Nikée van Dijk, Liv Pennock, Mats Rots, Alec van Hoorenbeeck, Bas Kuipers. Nine names. The key point is this: the 12.7 million euro profit is accounting profit — sale price minus residual book value — not cash received in one go. This is a vital distinction that many readers of football accounts skip over. A 20 million euro sale may bring in only 5 million in cash in the first season, with the rest paid in instalments across several transfer windows. Accounting books the profit immediately; cash flow trickles in.

I remember the summer of 2026, when stadiums stood empty because of the pandemic and I began to hear football through data rather than through the roar of the crowd. That period taught me one thing: when the noise of the stands is gone, the most important information lies in the numbers, and numbers always have two layers — the surface layer and the cash-flow layer. For Twente, the surface layer is a 7 million profit and healthy finances. The cash-flow layer is an operation running at a loss, covered by selling players.

On the balance sheet, Twente is genuinely strong. Equity of 49 million euros. Positive working capital of 14.8 million, up 9.3 million on the prior period. A solvency ratio of 47%, described by the club as stable. On balance-sheet terms, this is a well-run mid-tier European club with no sign of insolvency. Look only here, and there is nothing to criticise.

But a strong balance sheet does not mean a business model that feeds itself. Twente are running a machine whose profit depends on the two most volatile variables in football: European qualification and player sales. Last season, the first variable turned its back — Twente missed Europe and lost 13.7 million euros of revenue with it. The second variable shone — nine player sales rescued the entire financial year. Reverse those two variables, and the picture changes completely.

There is a telling detail buried in the cost section. Total costs fell by only 1.1 million euros, and the club explains why: a planned increase in personnel costs. Read that line again, one beat slower: in a year when revenue fell 22%, Twente still planned to raise wages. This is the point most articles will skip, because it is not as loud as the profit figure. Yet it is precisely what will decide next season.

The reason for higher wages may be perfectly legitimate: extending key players' contracts, stabilising the coaching staff, or re-basing the wage structure to keep young talent. But structurally, it is a step against the cash flow: fixed costs going up while revenue goes down. If Twente fail to reclaim a European place in 2026/27, pressure on the balance sheet will appear — not as bankruptcy, but as being forced to sell players earlier and cheaper than desired.

This is where I may be wrong, and I want to say so plainly.

The club calls its financial foundation healthy. On the balance sheet, that claim holds: 49 million equity, 47% solvency, positive working capital. But on the income statement, the claim is more optimistic than reality. A club whose operations lose 3 million euros cannot yet be called financially self-sufficient — it is self-sufficient by selling players. The truth everyone believes here is that profit means healthy. The truth that gets forgotten is that profit from selling players means healthy with conditions attached.

Nor do I buy reading a financial report as a dry summary. Notice the language: recalibration of the strategic course, recovery and building up, a shift in core values. This is the vocabulary of an institutional reset, of an organisation that has just moved past a difficult period and now needs to tell a new story. One detail says a great deal: across the entire statement, every individual named is someone who has left the club. Not a current coach, not a single retained key player is mentioned. When a club talks only about those who have gone, it signals a squad in transition and an identity being rebuilt around a system rather than around individuals.

The person on the bench sees most clearly who is acting. Here, the person outside the game — the neutral reader — also sees what the statement does not say: Twente live on two uncertain revenue streams, and they know it. The fact that the club publishes 2026/27 targets concrete enough to be tested — stay in the Conference League after the winter break, qualify for Europe with both the men's and women's teams, succeed in the cup — shows the board is putting itself in a position of public accountability. That is a reputational gamble, not an empty promise.

And here is the point I want to stress: the women's team appears in the same sentence about European ambition as the men's, and two women's players — Nikée van Dijk, Liv Pennock — sit in the sale list that generated the transfer profit. That means women's football at Twente is not an appendix but a genuine sporting and commercial asset. It is a perspective Vietnamese media almost never mention when discussing European clubs.

So if I must make a testable prediction, I will bet on this: if Twente miss Europe once more in 2026/27, they will be forced to sell at least one key player in the winter window, and the operating loss will widen. If they reclaim a European place, the machine runs on — but still on exactly two legs: European qualification and player sales.

The investment in Topsport Campus Diekman, together with the club's 60th anniversary, shows Twente betting on the long term: nurture talent, develop it, then sell it. That is the model of a club that understands its place in the European football value chain. The problem is not that the model is wrong. The problem is that the model only looks good while the selling machine keeps turning — and in football, no machine turns forever without jamming.

Sitting in the stands is like sitting in a bubble — everyone nods, no one sees anything. Seven million euros of profit is the ticket that makes people nod. But a football writer has a duty to look at the part no one wants to look at: the three million euro operating loss behind it.