Buying a professional football team? Ten lessons learned: #7 - Sponsors and fans could feel that the club's identity, is in the hands of a stranger; that is an enormous responsibility

As a new club owner, you immediately need to connect with fans and sponsors. When it comes to the sponsors, you need to deliver concrete value. The fan group is complex and targeting the young fans requires a diversified "new-school" skillset.

Alexander Janssen was involved on the ownership side of two clubs, one in Belgium and the other in Spain, where he learned that the football industry is not only extremely competitive but very, very different to the environment that he used to work in.

As a successful consultant with deep knowledge of turnarounds, he inexplicably experienced a sudden disregard of the discipline and long-term mindset that normally characterised his every move.

Janssen has written ten columns about the insights he gained from being involved with those two clubs. This is the seventh.