They will never ban Real Madrid and they are worse than Man City for spending money they dont make. If they did Ban one of the big clubs it would harm the TV money and at the end of the day thats what makes UEFA tick, thats all they are interested in. This whole ruling is based around protecting the big teams that bring in all the revenue and keeps the smaller teams away from the later stages of these tournaments. I agree 100% with the above poster about how past investment when others could not afford it has been put aside, its a shambolic rule that will never be enforced.
It's an either/or question that I simply can not adhere to. My point is essentially that investment enables growth. Clubs (many of the biggest clubs today) have at some point in their history benefited from investment (the Agnelli ownership of Juventus from the 1920s is a prime example of this). Investment has resulted in previous successes that has shaped the history and reputation of clubs that we all know (and admire) today. The biggest clubs (although not all) are able to live within their means. Some smaller clubs are able to also. Others want to develop the club, increase revenue, increase its value, and fulfill ambitions of challenging at the top of the game, and can only do so through initial investment. As long as the club, via its owner, can afford to realise such ambitions (that is, can afford to take the risk), then I simply do not see a problem. Like I say, this approach has shaped the history of the game we all know and love today.
To quote Platini: "Fifty per cent of clubs are losing money and this is an increasing trend. We needed to stop this downward spiral. They have spent more than they have earned in the past and haven't paid their debts". That is either Platini's genuine concern or it is a smokescreen. For this isn't a problem for the likes of City or Chelsea or Malaga or PSG etc. These clubs can not be deemed to "not be paying their debts". They are, via their owner, who turns the debt into equity. Now, for what its actually worth, I actually see the value in something like the FFP coming into the game. But limit investment as opposed to stopping it altogether. Yes, I know that investment will still be allowed in terms of stadium and youth development, but that is a self-defeating premise in the sense that such development should only occur if it doesn't financially endanger the future of the club itself. Which is EXACTLY how I feel about investment into the team itself. Why is it that UEFA have deemed investment into one area absolutely fine and without restriction, yet not at all into another? Investing into a stadium can increase revenue. Well so can investing into a team. The other goal of FFP is that it will lead to a more level playing field. Well then UEFA should stop creating a huge disparity between the most successful clubs and all the others. Consider that Everton's match-day revenue for an entire season (2010-11) was £20m. That is what a club can expect to earn simply for qualifying for the Champions League group stage! Such disparity plays a significant part in enabling clubs such as United to post such significant revenue figures that dwarf other clubs within the same domestic division. Even traditionally huge and successful clubs such as Everton. For the record, when you state that City's owner has pumped massive amounts of money into the club in a short space of time, the irony here is that the only reason those sums where so huge over such a short period is precisely because of the FFP. To get it all in before the FFP comes into play. Platini et al can moan about the spending of City, but at the very least I would expect them to understand why it happened.
To make the League super competitive they should reverse the prize money to give a financial boost to the clubs who finished lower down the league instead of making the rich clubs richer. Football is a sport after all, the honour of lifting trophies needs to come back into the game as the most important thing and not pay packets and sponsorship deals.
Or not give out any prize money based on final position at all. By all means, keep the parachute payment to safeguard relegated clubs who have to balance paying (or paying off) contracts while facing a season of reduced revenue in a lower division, but you're right - the honour of lifting trophies should be the most important thing. And of course, let's have a Champions League that is true to its name. A competition for Champions. Of course, UEFA will never sanction that because the CL as-it-is is such a huge money earner to them, but if they did it would without doubt reduce the amount of money any team received for competing within it, and certainly wouldn't conflict with UEFA's own hopes (for the FFP) in creating a "more level playing field". Oh, and yes, introduce a salary cap (or squad cap) while they're at it!!
Surley a simple way would be for each season 1, The clubs accounts are assessed, as in the expected income from all avenues. 2. The clubs current debts are assessed and how they plan to pay this off yearly through club revenue and not being funded by a billionaires personal fortune. Then if each club shows they can manage their debts within all their incomings, they are able to sign players to whichever fee they feel but with the understanding that next season there accounts will once again be reassessed and if it becomes clear they are spending out width their means and increasing debts without solid plans to pay them off then transfer bans are imposed until they sort out their accounts. This would stop clubs spending money they clearly don't have and killing leagues to the point the top clubs can just aggressively outbid others for players and possibly make a fairer playing field when it comes to transfer and wages.
Not a salary cap... That is what killed football in the first place as the clubs were paying the players feck all for years and they are now raping them for shed loads of cash to compensate. The balance has now shifted too much in the players favour but for many many years the clubs took the piss out of the players they had and paid them nothing.
It seems that there are many ways of viewing this situation, however we are always going to have different points of view. My contention remains. We are talking about incredibly wealthy state owned clubs with virtually limitless funds at their disposal. Yes, it can be argued that no club will spend more than it has to - but that's all relative. What, for instance, is peanuts to the owners of Man City, is a king's ransom to the majority of other clubs. No, there is never going to be a " level playing field" and some clubs will always be richer than others. However, this is a whole different ball game. Once again, we are talking about incredibly wealthy state owned clubs that can, and will, use whatever funds they need to become dominant. Again, once this new elite has been created, we are just replacing one problem with another one - only this one will be a far larger problem - and virtually impossible to dethrone once in power. The incredible financial fire- power of these clubs will dominate, and take over football. UEFA, and even FIFA, will then become powerless to resist them. I hope that I've read the situation wrong. But, I don't think I have.
It's in the interests of any club to aim as high as possible. That's the basis of competitive sport. The clubs who "self-generate" their wealth today didn't always - and they now dominate. Take away investment, and these clubs will be virtually impossible to dethrone. At least being allowed to invest follows the historical tradition of football, indeed any sport, enables clubs today to do what the biggest clubs did yesterday. If it results in more clubs (or merely different clubs) dominating, then so be it. It will also result in more money being brought into the game. Having said that, I would always propose that it is in the interests of every club not to be solely dependent upon investment, that the long term goal of any club should be to become self-sufficient. The irony being that it often requires a degree of investment in order to do so. To increase revenue. To compete at the highest level. To harness the potential riches from the game. How rich an owner is is irrelevant to the FFP. As I said yesterday, the FFP won't stop such people from owning football clubs. But if we follow history, then there are several examples of incredibly rich owners - certainly owners who are far more wealthy than the very biggest clubs could ever dream of being in terms of value. Jack Walker worth £600m in 1991 makes the £20m value of Manchester United at that time look like small-fry. Mansour's personal worth of £20 billion (and family worth of £500 billion) today makes the $2.24 billion value of Manchester United look like small-fry. Yet Walker only ever invested around £20m into Blackburn. To date, Mansour has invested an alleged £1 billion into City over a 4-year period. During that time, United have generated over £1.2 billion in revenue. So I don't see it as a whole different ball game but rather a relative argument. Without being allowed to invest, Spurs for example have no hope in hell of ever competing with United on a financial footing. Yet, despite being located in a more affluent city than Manchester, having a ground that holds approximately half that of Old Trafford, and currently residing less than a handful of places below United in the league, Spurs are valued at less than a quarter than what United are. And Spurs generate less than half the amount in revenue than United do. That's two predominant clubs in the country - two, for the period in which these figures relate, who were both Champions League clubs. For such a disparity to exist between two such clubs just goes to show how hard it is for Spurs to compete with the likes of United. That's Spurs, not a Wigan, or a Bolton, or a Norwich. And as it stands, and as it will stand with or without the FFP, that disparity is only ever going to get greater. Unless, that is, Spurs can invest (which the FFP won't allow them to do, irrespective of whether Spurs can service that investment, or whether the owner can afford it). After all, the huge amounts of investment into City hasn't resulted in City overtaking the revenue potential or value of United. It has merely resulted in City closing the gap, even if only a little. The opportunity to do so shouldn't be denied any club, just as it wasn't denied any club throughout the history of the game. (Note: My posts are getting longer and longer in this thread. I can only apologise for that, but also thank you for taking time out to read them. It's a good discussion, civil and respectful, with good points and genuine concerns being raised by all involved.)
FFP has actually started. The season just gone plus this coming season will be used to determine whether a club gets a licence to play in Europe. Over the 2 years the maximum allowable loss is £45m (excluding expenditure on stadium/infrastructure and youth development) Caveats are that if you show a positive trend then you may get the licence (notice how City lost £197m in the year before the monitiring period started - pretty easy to show a positve trend from there!), and also sugar daddies are still allowed to give a club up to £45m as long as it is not a loan.
We're just going around in circles here. Sure, more money may come into the game, but it will all be concentrated in very few hands. All the revenue from winning titles, cups, etc, will all go to the same limited amount of clubs. Of course, there has never been a level playing field in terms of resources. What is threatened now, however, will just make the field even more uneven, not smoother!
I have to agree with NSIS. Make it a squad salary cap that a decent number of sides can afford, if you want a level playing field. That's not what FIFA/UEFA actually want though, of course.
In some ways, the clubs that are making sure they can compete under FFP - Spurs, Arsenal and Newcastle in the Premier League, for example - are going to be hit short term by clubs thinking they don't apply to them like Chelsea or City, but the problem is that if those clubs are able to skirt the rules with little to no sanctions against them doing so, what would be the point of other teams following the rules? It's pretty similar to Leeds' situation - they tried to reduce their debts by selling key members of the squad without replacing them, yet at the exact same time Chelsea's debts were more severe than Leeds' and they weren't trying to reduce the debt with player sales, and they got away with it when Roman turned up on the doorstep. The long and the short of it is that there's always going to be somebody brass-necked enough to think they can get around the system and, all to often, they do. That's what UEFA need to crack down once FFP comes into force, and not with fines that can easily be written off, but actions that serve as a warning.
Not been online for a day or so but just want to say how much I've just enjoyed reading all the posts here and Ripley's Cat's contributions in particular. Forgive me if I've just read this wrong and I AM a little bit tired and crap right now but are RP and NSIS saying the same thing? That the trouble with the FFP rules is that it is a system whereby, in effect, the ladder gets pulled up and no other team can now do what many "Big Clubs" have done at some point in their history and had a period of huge investment? It's almost as if the ladder up into the elite was always there (should blind luck find you a wealthy benefactor) and some have managed to climb it so to try to make football fairer UEFA propose to just take the ladder away. But thereby leaving the current elite where they are. This is something that I've thought before and wondered why this unwanted (?) side-effect is not talked about more. LDL, (waaay above this post) says something like "football's always had hierarchies of wealth". But the point is that in the past at least the wealth could change from one club to the next (even though it might seem unfair and weird at the time) whereas FFP will solidify and crystallise the elites forever. No Abramovich for Spurs or Everton or Bristol City. So do people think that a total squad wage cap would have been a fairer way to level the playing field? Transfer fees, stadium upgrades etc completely unregulated but just this one limit? What would be the unintended consequences of that then, do we think? First thoughts: - The richest clubs, with a wage bill the same as Wigan's or Blackburn's, would now have many millions more to spend on transfer fees - these would inflate massively. - Quite likely less movement of players from around the world to the richest leagues. If they can't earn mega-money by emigrating maybe many more might stay where they are. - Players would not be so incentivised to move clubs. Man Utd could offer Spurs £100m for Livermore and Spurs might really want to accept it but why would Livermore want to move? His family are here, his mates are here, he doesn't like the rain. Would medals alone be enough to entice players to move? Who would Arsenal ever sign again? Anyway just thought I'd start another tangent going. Sorry for ANOTHER long post on this thread (I share your inclination towards long posts, Ripley's) but I think this thread is worth it.
There's a squad cap in the NBA (I believe) and the incentive for a player to move is so that they can get a bigger chunk of a squad's salary. I think there were a couple of players at different teams that received about half of their squad's total! Would it work in football? No idea.
My point is that FFP rules, or whatever the governing bodies use to try and maintain at least some sort of equality of opportunity, will need to be done very soon. Their own future depends on it, IMO. Once again, we are talking about a new elite of super rich clubs, with virtually limitless funds. Football has never seen the kind of financial fire power that these oil state owned clubs can bring to bear, should they so choose. Left unchecked, these clubs will rapidly come to dominate their domestic league, and then the European game.we have already seen what can be achieved with this kind of money at your disposal. How long has it taken Man City to come from total obscurity to EPL champions? Not very long! If left unregulated, these clubs will garner so much power between them that UEFA will be powerless to resist them. Now is the time for them to take firm action, before it's too late
Sorry - yeah. I was momentarily forgetting that I was talking about a total squad wage cap. Tired and crap, like I said.
But isn't football already dominated by elites? The effects of these rules would, arguably, just serve to set those elites in stone. Of course one factor against saying (as Ripley's Cat is suggesting, I believe) that the potential ladder should be left there for everyone is that having that ladder there unchecked does have the effect of destabilising not just the elites but also all the clubs who try to keep up with the newly-wealthy clubs (and the clubs who merely try to catch up with the ones who are trying to catch up with the elites etc etc). And that's surely the biggest problem with massive, sudden investment. The clubs who try to (but can't) keep up with the newly-rich clubs and the effect on average wages, transfer fees etc across all clubs.
The point is, that NOBODY can hope to keep up with these clubs. Their limitless supply of funds is unprecedented in the game. There really is no comparison. As I put earlier, the sums at their disposal make even Abramovich a relative pauper!
