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Uefa boss Aleksander Ceferin is apparently showing the range here, which will give investors room to breathe in the future
Photo: JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BOTT / EPA
The Executive Committee of the European Football Union (Uefa) approved the expected reform of Financial Fair Play (FFP) on Thursday.
The frequently criticized and often insufficiently implemented FFP will be replaced from June by a successor regulation called »Financial Sustainability« (financial sustainability).
In the future, clubs may only spend 70 percent of their income on squad costs, including transfers, salaries and costs for player agents.
However, the so-called "squad cost control" comes into force in three stages - from 90 to 80 to the announced 70 percent in a three-year cycle until 2025. This is a concession to the clubs, which for years have made a living from spending more than they earn.
There will be no upper salary limit demanded by many.
But there are still many unanswered questions: details of the overall package are to be clarified in the next few weeks.
The question of whether the clubs can deduct their ancillary wage costs from this 70 percent package was controversial until the very end.
Bundesliga is halfway satisfied
The Bundesliga clubs should be able to live with this rule for the time being.
The fact that investors can pump unlimited money into the clubs, as some European clubs had asked for at the beginning of the reform process, is off the table for now.
However, the unequal treatment of the clubs persists simply because the budgets are different – and thus also the 70 percent share.
»The football industry has changed.
The reform was necessary," said Uefa President Aleksander Ceferin: "The new rules help us to protect the game." The guidelines co-developed by the European club association ECA are to be introduced in a continuous process over three years.
In the future, an external sponsor should be able to compensate for a difference between income and expenditure in the amount of up to 60 million euros over a period of three years.
This was particularly helpful for clubs in the Premier League, the league in which the largest transfer fees are paid.
So far it has been 30 million euros over three years.
How consistent is the punishment?
Rule violations can range from fines to point deductions.
The possible forced relegation discussed, for example from the Champions to the Europa League, has not yet been decided.
That should be the sticking point of the new regulation.
The main reason the old Financial Fair Play was vulnerable was that the rules could be circumvented.
There were rarely serious penalties for violations.
The new system will therefore have to be measured above all by how sanctions are dealt with and how consistently they are implemented.
In the past, clubs like Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City got off lightly despite obvious violations.
In the case of the English champions, there are new inconsistencies, as reported by SPIEGEL.
CEO Oliver Kahn from the German record champions Bayern Munich recently spoke of “a milestone” with regard to the new guidelines.
He hopes that this will put a “slight brake on salaries and transfer fees”.
“Many different interests had to be taken into account in this process.
It was and is important to us that there are no free tickets for dubious business," Fernando Carro, CEO of Bayer Leverkusen, told the sports information service: "Against this background, we as the Bundesliga must and can live with the compromise that has been reached."
aha/sid/dpa
