FINANCIAL FAIR PLAY will make the competition even more unfair

[debussy]

When the January transfer window closes, the biggest clubs in the game will once again have purchased the best players from their smaller counterparts. A tale that is able to repeat itself because of one thing only: Money. A whole lot of it. UEFA's Financial Fair Play wants to put an end to these excesses, but research has revealed that the rules

Comments

[meliadoul]

First of all Alan Sugar hasn't held any Spurs shares for at least 5 years

[mrscrapbag]

This is a very interesting article indeed! thank you for translating it, OP!

i have to admit i still don't fully grasp the entire scope of the Financial Fair Play rule. but based on how things are going, i think it would be difficult to enforce such drastic rule changes in football. because, like what was said in the article: it's been the status quo for a while now. with that said, i'm all for developing a real solid solution to this problem; one that will give a fair chance to everyone involve.

[the4thjuliek]

Thank you for this wonderful article, debussy!

FFP is such a confusing, befuddling rule. I hope the FA are stricter about it in England like they are in Germany. Though personally, I support teams (Arsenal and Dortmund) who have never had problems with FFP and have always been frugal with money (actually, in the case of Arsenal, people have criticized Wenger for his frugality, like he can magically conjure up money). They really should take the team benefactor's wealth into account because despite all the rules, teams like Man City are forced to restrict their spending to 50 million pounds, which is still a lot of money, a lot more than what most teams spend over the course of 5 or 6 years.

And then the UEFA fines the clubs that violate the FFP rules and pays other clubs like Arsenal and Manchester United the money. As these are teams with big revenues (and Manchester United spent 150 million in the summer), it's not really fair for them to get more money for not violating rules.

[minervasolo]

Obviously the UK used to have a salary cap. Bit before my time (!) but there's no sense it made the game more exciting. Players gravitated to leagues (or non-league teams) that didn't have a cap instead. Unless it was applied globally, and even then, you'd just see the talent moving elsewhere. You might even get a non-FIFA league popping up.

...Or, you know, let's do that. FIFA can have a salary cap, and we can have a Sep Blatter cap (where the maximum is none).