FFP focus has to be on debt but we know why it won’t be
CITY could have a memorable season on the field as the fight for honours on four fronts continues.
But even if the Blues finish the campaign potless, they could still have had a good year in terms of affirming their place in the power structure of European football.
The noise of chickens coming home to roost for some of their fiercest critics has been a comforting soundtrack to the last 12 months for Blues fans - with the sheer clucking hypocrisy of those snipers being brutally exposed.
Financial Fair Play (FFP) is about to be torn up by Uefa, after City’s case proved it was not fit for purpose, and with the Covid crisis drumming home the message that owners who invest are NOT the problem.
There is a real prospect that a new system will evolve which actually DOES target the ills which force clubs into financial straits, rather than punish those which – like City – encourage investment and budgetary sanity.
But don’t count on it. Uefa president Aleksandr Ceferin has already talked about new rules which would curtail transfer fees and wages in a bid to stop the spiralling inflation of the market of player sales.
To examine the likelihood of any legislation coming into force, it always pays to take a look at who will be most adversely affected by a cap on wage bills and transfer fees.
And when they hit the most powerful, you can bet that you will face an almighty struggle to turn ideas into reality.
That is what happened with FFP in the first place. As a notion, it was initially a scheme to prevent clubs from spending money they simply did not have, and targeted leveraged debt just as much as it did clubs who over-stretched themselves in the transfer market.
It quickly became obvious that the inclusion of debt in any FFP rules would jeopardise the inclusion of clubs like Liverpool, United, Barcelona and Real Madrid in European competition.
Et voila. Debt was quietly dropped and blithely dismissed as being a part of everyday life. “We all have a mortgage,” said the apologists, failing to point out that you lose the house if you don’t keep up payments, and that to keep up payments you need to repeatedly finish in the top four.
Instead, FFP became a weapon for attacking the likes of Paris St Germain and City, who had the audacity to elbow their way to the top table of European football, were debt-free and had owners who invested rather than extracted.
No other industry on the planet would dream of penalising business owners who used capital investment to massively enhance the quality and size of their company but would turn a blind eye to Barcelona’s £800m debt, or United plunging to £455m in the red.
Ceferin’s vague notions of curtailing fees and wages look promising. But when you cast an eye down the top 20 of transfer fees, the same clubs crop up - PSG, Barcelona, Real Madrid, United, Juventus.
Obviously, any such rules would stop PSG from breaking through the ceiling, and causing inflation, and maybe that will attract support from the established elite.
The noise around a possible European super league, with United and Liverpool heavily involved, also speaks of growing desperation that the stranglehold which that elite holds is slowly being prised from the throat of football. Incredibly, the rules allowed for clubs with a history of involvement in European competitions to be given free passes in seasons when they are not good enough to qualify by finishing in the top four of their leagues.
That is not only massively unfair on clubs like Leicester and West Ham, who are fighting to qualify for Champions League against the financial odds, it is anti-competitive and damaging.
But at least it strips away the last vestiges of the idea that these clubs are all pulling together to keep football pure and untainted by the villainous ‘oil money’ clubs. FFP and uncompetitive super leagues are two sides of the same coin - aimed wholly at preserving the financial and political power of the traditionally rich clubs.
It is enlightening that Uli Hoeness, one of City’s fiercest critics in his time as Bayern Munich president, recently voiced his opinion that former Bayern chief executive Karl Heinz Rummenigge - another Blue basher - should be the German
FFP is about to be torn up by Uefa after City’s case proved it was not fit for purpose Stuart Brennan
FA’s voice in the corridors of power at Uefa and Fifa.
This is a common tactic. United managed to position their former chief exec David Gill in positions of power, firstly at the FA and then Uefa, where he became head of the club licensing committee which held the power of sanction over clubs found to be in breach of FFP.
Ex-Liverpool chief executive Rick Parry found himself on the club financial control board, charged with investigating FFP breaches.
It is what the powerful do in football - ensure they retain their power by having people in key positions, where the decisions are made.
And then we have City’s archcritic Javier Tebas, still whingeing away about the Blues despite the fact that La Liga, of which he is president, is crumbling under severe financial and political pressure.
After years of moaning that City were ‘piddling in the pool’ because they were state-funded - which is strictly untrue - there must have been some delicious delight in the posh offices at City when it was revealed Barcelona, Real Madrid, Osasuna and Atletico Madrid have all benefited from illegal state funding. Hypocrisy does not even begin to describe that situation, all playing out right under Tebas’ sniffy nose.
He is increasingly a caricature figure, a man sitting atop a stinking, collapsing dungheap who is shouting that his neighbour has muddy shoes.
Tebas has even suggested that the independent Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which lifted City’s European ban after finding them not guilty of subverting FFP rules, should be investigated.
It seems that Senor Tebas will not be satisfied until City are hauled before a court in which he, Rummenigge and Hoeness are the presiding judges.
So here is a novel idea for Ceferin, as he ponders how to put the ‘fair’ back into ‘financial fair play.’
How about having some binding misconduct rules which hold whiners and influencers like Tebas, Hoeness and Rummenigge to account when they make unsubstantiated claims and question the integrity of the rulings of an independent court like CAS?
Managers who criticise referees get slapped with FA charges, and rightly so. And anyone in the game who suggests there is a whiff of fraud about a match official would face severe sanction.
Maybe such rules should also be applied to club and league executives who make unfounded comments.