I laid my cards on the table, put myself on the line, laid my body on the tracks, and generally risked ridicule.
After a lot of Untold readers had previously written in and said that the new UEFA regs on financial doping would hit the dust, they went through unmolested.
UEFA Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play Regulations, submitted to the committee now enters the football rule book.
Michel Platini said: “The philosophy is that you cannot spend more money than you generate.”
The chairman of the European Club Association, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, said: “This really is a huge achievement. On behalf of the European Club Association, I would like to thank UEFA and especially Michel Platini for his initiative that goes, I believe, in the right direction.”
The full UEFA Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play Regulations, edition 2010, will be published in June. Clubs will be assessed on a risk basis, taking into account debts and salary levels, as well as the following main pillars:
• Break-even requirement – clubs must not spend more than they generate over a period of time
• No overdues payable during the season – towards other clubs, employees and/or social/tax authorities
• Provision of future financial information – to ensure clubs can meet their future obligations.
So that’s that. But actually UEFA went on and talked some more…
The UEFA Executive Committee also agreed to propose to FIFA a further two years of experimentation with two extra additional assistant referees, and that the trails take place in
- the 2010/11 UEFA Champions League as of the play-offs (the last qualifying round before the group stage),
- the UEFA Europa League as from the group stage,
- the UEFA EURO 2012 qualifying phase and final tournament,
- the 2010 UEFA Super Cup
And just in case you thought it was all getting nice and simple, try this one…
“For the UEFA EURO 2012 qualifying competition, the 51 participating teams have been drawn into six groups of six teams and three groups of five teams. The nine group winners and the best runner-up will qualify directly for the final tournament. The additional four sides that will participate in the finals will be determined by play-off games between the eight remaining runners-up.”
Other decisions taken by UEFA
• The final-round match schedule for the UEFA European Under-21 Championship, 2009-11 competition, was amended to start on Saturday 11 June 2011, instead of Sunday 12 June, allowing for an additional rest day between matchdays 2 and 3
• The UEFA European Under-21 Championship, 2009-11 competition, play-off and final draw procedures, to take place this year on 10 September in Herning and on 9 November in Aalborg, Denmark, respectively
• Regulations of the UEFA European Under-19 Championship, 2010/11 competition
• Regulations of the UEFA European Under-17 Championship, 2010/11 competition
• Regulations of the UEFA European Women’s Under-19 Championship, 2010/11 competition
• Regulations of the UEFA European Women’s Under-17 Championship, 2010/11 competition
• Regulations of the UEFA European Futsal Championship, 2011/12 competition
The announcement of the host association of UEFA EURO 2016 to be made at 13.00CET on Friday. (Yawn)
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Imagine an Arsenal manager changing the entire first XI. Impossible? No it actually happened. This is it.
Want want want? Well you could always read a book.
Man U has just come out and announced that they pass the new financial rules….is that total malarkey just to keep fans from further revolt over at united or do they know something i dont, such as loopholes in the fine print???
I found an interesting article comparing Arsenal to Barcelona, finances remain a mystery to me however it was pretty clear to see something interesting happening =)
http://swissramble.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-can-barcelona-afford-cesc-fabregas.html
Does this now mean that clubs like Barcelona, Real Madrid, ManU(re)and co’ can no longer borrow from the banks to fund their spending then?
Would be interesting to see how much/little the extra ref’s have contributed and what major decisions the ref missed. Although it must be difficult to collect such data
Some good news I would say.
How could you look like a total prat Tony? Mmmmm You didn’t look like a prat when I met you last time. 😉
John L, I think MU are talkint the truth for the moment. As they don’t have to be ready today yet I think. They have a bit of time, but not that much and it will be hard work to get them in order in the next year
I dont know, I’m sure there are many loopholes in the whole thing which will allow barcelona and real madrid to overspend.
It wont really have any effect on us or top clubs who are our closest rivals.
Its more to stop situations like portsmouth happening.
our board can keep on saving the pound notes while others around us strengthen their sides and win titles and doubles and european cups.
What sanctions will actually happen if clubs do not meet the standards and when will they take effect. I hope this does actually work as it’s long overdue, but with clubs like Chelsea losing 50 mil every year before player transfers I can’t imagine it being enforced properly if the sanctions were to be for instance expulsions from tournaments
bruno, I would recomend you to read the swissramble side. The link is above
interesting read
so we make made around 5 times the pre tax profit of barcelona.
but have less than half of the ambition when recruiting players…
I hope gazidis sorts out our sponsorship deals as he seems to do little else that directly affects our failing on field team that conceded more goals this year than last, and did worse in the champions league and fa cup.
Congrats Lord Tony.
Let the records read that u’ve been shouting this from the roof top for at least 1year.
Let the date, May 27, 2010, be recorded as the day a new order was created in European football. A new order that Wenger anticipated by 3 or more years.
Let us see how many trophies the head start will garner for us in the near future.
Tony — I admit it, I was wrong. (And I’m very happy that I was wrong!).
AW was right all along.
Tony — One criticism that I’ve noticed among the many articles on this, is that these rules merely lock the gate to smaller clubs trying to get bigger, and that the only reason Roman A. supported the rules was because he was already able to secure Chelsea’s place among the elite through huge amounts of spending.
What do you think about this?
I can see the logic in this, but if spending on youth academies and new stadia is NOT counted as unsustainable debt, then these arguments are pretty silly, right (i.e. rich benefactor X and spend 100 million pounds on a world-class academy…)? Or is it that the rich clubs now have such a huge financial advantage that with these new rules, it’s impossible for others to catch-up?
Finally, Tottenham’s finances continue to perplex me. How is it that they are, like Arsenal, one of the paragons of financial fair play?
🙂 as i have said before, there’s plenty of time for clubs to change their policies. And they will get around this regulation.
Tim. New stadium and upgraded youth academy is an investment for the club long term, where the clubs are allowed to have a couple years with losses. Spurs have their accounts in Virgin Islands or something so they can basically say anything they want. (Wonder how UEFA will get access to these accounts).
They really dont mean much though, with regards to the big clubs that matter. Scousers don’t. Perhaps the Chavs, when their squad begins to fossillize. That aside, how sad is it to see Barca being pretty much everything a fair amount of us want our club to be (bar greedy board stuffing cash, and incredible pricing, but including super summer signings), as thats most of what I garnered from that report. The debt is not exactly phenomenal, the interest payments are pretty low so they could drag it out, and with their academy, they’ll have players to sell on for years. If anything, it confirms that they could actually buy El Capitan if they truly want to!
@tim,
Although Tottenham’s last annual accounts (up to 30 June 1999) reported a £33m pre-tax profit, this was entirely due to the stonking £57m profit they made when selling Berbatov to United, Keane to Liverpool and three players to Sunderland. Without these sales, they would have made a loss.
In fact, their most recent published accounts (for the six months up to 31 December 2009) showed a pre-tax loss of £8m. You would be forgiven for not noticing this, as the club’s press release for those accounts opted to instead highlight profit from operations (before player trading, amortisation and interest), which was a positive £5m. Well, it would be if you excluded £20m amortisation and £3m net interest (compensated to some extent by £9m profit from player sales).
My guess is that the next set of annual accounts from Spurs could also show a loss, as: (a) the amortisation increases to reflect their player purchases; (b) the profit from player sales is much less than the prior year.
I examined this in painful detail in my blog, where I also take issue with how Tottenham describe their debt:
http://swissramble.blogspot.com/2010/03/are-tottenhams-results-too-good-to-be.html
@ Swiss and Fedda — Thank you guys.
So Tottenham’s accounting is utter B.S. then. If so, why aren’t they criticized in the press? I mean, the pundits take pains to point out Man U’s sale of C. Ronaldo as misleading…Could ‘Arry’s free ride w/ the press have anything to do with it?
It also seems like the argument about closing the door on the up-and-comers is B.S., too. A rich benefactor could easily buy, say, Stoke, and pour all his dough into a new stadium and youth academy to make his club grow…a 60,000 seater and lots of up-and-comers would do nicely for any club. It’ll just take time…The only thing UEFA is doing is making sure there’s no sudden get-rich quick scheme like Man City’s…then my question is: why are the press making it seem like this rule will harm small clubs? Killing off the little guy is not the issue at all!
@Swiss — I really appreciate the clarity of your writing and diligence of your investigative work. Very impressive.
So how much debt are Trash. United and Luckypool carrying and how much interest should they be paying back and exactly how much are they paying back,figures please ,not twaddle ?
So how will the Red Knights of old Trafford re-finace their ballooning debt once they have taking over from the Glazer,s who
didn,t authorise the old loud mouth to spend big money on Berbatov,Cristiano Ronaldo ,Rooney and pay such exorbitant weekly wages ,facts please not bulls- ?
@ Samuel — Please stop your insults or leave this blog. What’s covered here is hardly “twaddle” or “bullshit”.
If you want facts and figures, the best I’ve seen have been covered by the Swiss Rambler on his page…the links are above.
The Swiss Rambler’s article is interesting- because it strongly supports much of what Tony has been arguing for some time about the solid self sustaining underpinning of the current Arsenal regime. I have no argument with that at all.
However it also supports a concern that I have had for some time that Arsenal’s salary structure has been geared up to Arsenal being a feeder club- i.e. paying more young players high salaries than competitors, having relatively fewer players at the top end on high salaries and having a lower salary to turnover ratio than all major competitors (46%). The swiss Rambler also states “What fans possibly don’t appreciate is how important profit on player sales has been to Arsenal’s overall profit (£23m in the last annual accounts – excluding the sales of Adebayor and Toure to Manchester City).” He also argues that this position could be tweaked- i.e. trimming the number of young players we provide high salaries to, and marginally increasing our salary to turnover ratio-without destabilising the financial soundness which has already been established- a position I wholeheartedly agree with.
I also question why more is not made of the issue of raising commercial revenues-by for example buying one or 2 major stars. Al I ever hear is “we cannot afford the salaries of the likes of Buffon or Ribery” and those plus the transfer fee are prohibitive”- yes but what about the revenues from such as shirt sales?- backed by marketing strategies across China, India and Japan and the far East where there is massive untapped potential for raising commercial club revenue- but we need some more stars- and we need some evidence that the solid financial underpinning will lead to more than comfortable survival in a harsh financial climate, but also to success on the field.
I’d be interested in hearing how you feel about French clubs being able to get the French state to pay for all their stadia to be upgraded for free courtesy of Euro 2016?
Seeing as how all the English clubs must pay for it off their own bats?
Is that financial fair play?