http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/27198306 Manchester City and Paris St-Germain are facing sanctions after breaching Uefa's financial fair play (FFP) rules. Fewer than 20 clubs are understood to have failed to meet key criteria. Uefa has made settlement offers to all clubs deemed to have breached rules ahead of a meeting on Thursday. City must now decide whether to accept the offer made to them or try to negotiate a lesser punishment, which varies from a reprimand to a fine or European squad restrictions next term. The most powerful sanction, that of being excluded from European competition, is not expected to be implemented. While the settlements each club have been offered remain unknown, Uefa could reveal the outcomes as early as Friday. Any outstanding cases will go to an adjudicatory panel for a final decision if agreement cannot be reached. Uefa president Michel Platini said recently he did not think any of the clubs who breached rules would be liable to exclusion from European competition next season. Under FFP, losses are limited to £37m (45m euros) over the last two years. City posted combined losses of £149m for the last two seasons - £97m in 2012 and £51.6m in 2013. Qatar-owned PSG have been the club under most scrutiny after they wiped out their losses with a huge and back-dated sponsorship deal with the Qatar Tourist Authority. Platini said he was unsure if that "innovative" sponsorship deal with a related party played by the rules. BBC Radio 5 live sports news correspondent Richard Conway thinks Uefa is likely to focus on some kind of squad penalty for the serious offenders. "Perhaps a salary cap or limiting the number of eligible players," he said. "Perhaps making new signings ineligible for the Champions League." Clubs who have not been playing in European competition this season will not have to pass the FFP rules until next autumn. Looks like they are bending over to accommodate those who breach the rules. Unfortunately football is all about money nowadays and imposing small penalties on these kind of mega rich clubs will not make much of a difference. Banning them from the Champions league would have been the best kind of deterrent. Unfortunately they've already ruled that out.
Personally I think they should throw the book at them both. Either kick them out of the Champions League or fine them by the amounts that they have failed FFP by. Looks like it will amount to little more than a slap on the wrist though.
Last chance saloon for UEFA to make their FFP rules mean anything. If nothing significant happens, clubs can now go and spend whatever they want. And you can almost guarantee that nothing significant will happen.
I don't think they should be excluded from the CL straight away - that's playing the ace too early Step 1: New transfers are excluded from playing CL Step 2: Transfer embargo on buying/selling players based within UEFA Step 3: Expulsion from UEFA competitions
the point is though, that City and PSG have now spent money unfairly, whilst everyone else in the competition is "playing by the rules". Using a metaphor, if you have a league of 20 teams with only amateur players. But 2 of the teams are allowed to bring in 3 professionals, an advantage no other team has. The only way to stop them doing it is to take away their advantage immediately (fine them the amount they overspent) or kick them out of the competition.
Fining them for overspending achieves nothing. They won't think, "oh we won't do that again"... they'll think, "right, so if we spend £80m on Suarez and get a £40m fine then that's £120m for Suarez, that's pretty good".
Why don't UEFA just not give financial prizes/incentives to any team that qualifies in breach of the rules? I haven't read much about this but I don't think I've ever seen that point raised. Then add a reasonable fine to it too. If they step out of line again look at making players ineligible, and if it happens again, give a ban and a transfer embargo. I should be UEFA.
It's almost like discovering that money has been going missing from the till, you discover who's been doing it and put in a measure from stop it happening again, but allow the thieves to keep the money.
EUFA have 2 options: 1. Impose champions lge bans, transfer bans etc 2. Fine the offending clubs The problem with 1. is that the rich kids will get their clever and expensive lawyers to contest any punishment of this nature and the reality is that their people will be cleverer than EUFA's so nullifying any punishment. And 2. goes no way to hurting a club/penalising owners who have no respect for money and for who no fine can ever 'punish' them. So all in all, the chequebook wins..............again
