After Manchester City produced their financial reports – or more accurately, losses last week, it resulted in the very predictable outcry around football and indeed the world. Much the same with Chelsea when Abramovich took over, or what PSG and Russian club Anzhi Makhachkala have to look forward to, the influx of money cannot suddenly balance the books, and although they are not in actual financial jeopardy, on paper they record staggering losses and are technically in grave danger.
However, this is not a ‘real situation’ and the clubs are in no danger of going into administration, rendering the figures basically useless, as they will almost certainly continue to spend and get into a ‘worse’ situation. Cue UEFA attempting to increase the financial fair play rules and do something about this – specifically preventing clubs who breach said rules from entering the transfer market.
In reality, any excuse for football’s governing bodies to create another useless rule that can easily be worked around seems to be welcomed, and in a time where there are much more pressing issues – racism anyone – as per usual the focus is on something far more trivial.
Yes, there will always be the people who say the billionaire owners are destroying football and making it untenable for the rest of clubs, but it is a fact of life now that such people exist in football, and no amount of good character tests or fair play rules are going to stop them from buying a club and pouring billions into it.
The latest proposals by UEFA have been placed on the shelves in Nyon for the time being, and will be collecting dust along with the files on racial chanting, bribing referees and Jose Mourinho’s latest misconduct, as they quite simply cannot legally enforce them.
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To impose a transfer ban on clubs who breach said fair play rules is flawed to say the least, with the EU and issues of restraint of trade being the most likely to be employed by a club or player affected by these rules, and would be laughed out of court. Not to mention the small fact that UEFA do not actually have any say over player registrations – it is a combination of FIFA and national associations who hold all the cards here, and UEFA can actually do very little.
The ‘sliding scale’ that Platini and Uefa wished to adopt – a range of sanctions before a club is barred from the competition all together – would range from the proposals above to stopping an individual player from participating in the competition or withholding prize money. Cue a huge range of lawsuits ranging from Human Rights issues, restraint of trade etc things that the ECJ love ruling on and take very seriously.
Although the idea from UEFA is commendable on some scale, and supported by clubs such as Arsenal, it is a non-starter, and would bring much more trouble than it would solve should it be implemented.
Yes without such sanctions the new proposals loses validity, but in reality did it really have that much anyway? To lose a maximum of £38 million over the next three seasons is nigh on impossible for clubs such as City, and even reducing losses will not achieve this – Chelsea, despite former exec Peter Kenyon’s claims had not broken even on schedule, and the way they are going a Roman revolution and more losses will be inevitable.
For clubs with billionaire owners, the fact of the matter remains that they can and will buy players both their balance sheets and UEFA tell them they cannot afford, and UEFA’s proposals will end up putting them so far into debt with court cases and legal challenges should they come to pass that the whole sorry affair will end in tears.
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