Not necessarily true. Debt is considered to be a good thing in business a lot of the time when on a growth model.
Even in a non-growth model, if there is significant cash generation where the company can pay it off. That is the playbook of most private equity firms.
Imagine a company worth $5B, generating, $1B in cash - but declines each year - $100M. Interest rate 7%.
Step 1) Buy a company that is declining/stagnant but generates a lot of cash for a reasonable price - say 5x cash flow.
Step 2) Put in 20% equity, and fund the rest using a blend of debt - with various liens, secured/unsecured. You have to pay off interest of course.
Step 3) You have $4B in debt, and each year you pay some off over 3 years...
yr 0 - $4B debt
yr 1 - $1B cash flow, after interest of $280, you pay down debt with $720 million = $3.280 billion
yr 2 - $900M cash flow, after interest of $229, you pay down debt with $671 million = $2.609 billion
y 3 - $800 cash flow, after interest of $182, you pay down debt with $618 million = $1.991 billion.
yr 4 = $700 million
At end of year 3, you sell for 5x$700MM = $3.5B in total value - debt $1.99MM, = $1.509M in equity - initial investment of $1B (20% of $5B) = 50% ROI, or 14.5% per year. And just an FYI, a 14.5% annual return is low for what a hedge fund usually targets.
But bringing this back to Juventus: football teams don't generate cash usually because of a need to be competitive, unless you're the most profitable team like United...which can actually afford to pay dividends.
So football teams must rely on the value of the business increasing to make money. Simply put, the cash flow deficits (or annual increase in debt), must be less that the appreciation of the company value. And with record sporting rights deals, this has been possible for many teams. Football teams aren't usually value on cash flow, but could be valued on cash flow before investment in new players or EBITDA.
Example is Porto - which according to its figures is run VERY aggressively.
From 2013 to 2018, the company ran cash deficits of $20-50M Euro, and saw debt increase from $95 million to $278 million. Scary right? no. The market value of company over the same period increased from $82.3 to $302.9MM, and therefore saw equity increase from $5M in total value $15M (200%). It's share count increased by 46% so equity holders made a return of: (1+2.00)(1/(1+.46)= 2.045-1 = return on equity investment of 104.5%. Before 2013, totally different story as seen by the stock price.