UEFA has used its meeting to Monaco to launch its financial fair play rules and emphasise their importance for the future health of the European game. They consider that before the rules ‘anarchy’ was prevalent in European football.
UEFA has used its meeting to Monaco to launch its financial fair play rules and emphasise their importance for the future health of the European game. They consider that before the rules ‘anarchy’ was prevalent in European football.
The rules will not become mandatory until 2103/14 when sanctions will be deployed for the first time in the form of exclusion from European competitions. These decisions will be based on financial reports for 2011/12 and 2012/13.
Uefa was at pains to emphasise that the European Club Association, the successor to G-14, is fully signed up to the plans. That is fine when their impact is not clear, but it is likely that Uefa will want to demonstrate that the system is working and can bite by securing an early ‘trophy’ in the form of a delinquent club, very likely from the English Premiership. It is then that the fireworks will start.
Uefa is also clearly very concerned about the problem of betting fraud involving players which it seems to think is quite extensive. It is collaborating with police forces across Europe, but the issue is an inherently difficult one to tackle.