Financial fair play in football: more prudence, please

Even the new name indicates that the wish for more fair competition, which some dreamers associated with the reform of financial fair play, will remain unfulfilled.

The word "fair play" has disappeared from the set of rules that the Executive Committee of the European Football Association (UEFA) will adopt this Thursday to control the economic activities of the major football brands.

At the end of a three-year introductory phase, the clubs must submit to an agreement that was negotiated as "financial sustainability";

it is more about economic sustainability than sporting justice.

The clubs, which despite their enormous income repeatedly have financial problems, should be forced to be more prudent.

"A compromise"

However, investor clubs will continue to have significantly better chances of success than member-run competitors.

Nevertheless, Hans-Joachim Watzke, the managing director of Borussia Dortmund, says: "In the end it became a compromise that I would not have believed a year ago that could be achieved at this level."

During the month-long struggle over the future set of rules, Watzke represented German interests together with Bayern Munich's CEO Oliver Kahn, Michael Gerlinger, the record champion's legal advisor, and Bayer Leverkusen's managing director Fernando Carro.

Against enormous resistance, Watzke says: "Clubs that are attached to a large investor have a completely different perception and a completely different objective than clubs with different structures.

Resolving that is relatively difficult, we had to fight hard battles.”

Violations will be sanctioned

The result is a set of rules with three key points: At the end of the three-year introductory phase, football companies are only allowed to invest 70 percent of their income from sponsorship, player sales, ticketing, media marketing and merchandising for salaries, transfers and consulting costs in their professional squad.

In addition, external investors are prohibited from investing more than 20 million euros per season on average over a period of three years in order to compensate for deficits.

Excesses such as buying a superstar like Neymar for 220 million euros from Paris St. Germain, which was financed directly with money from the Qatari club owners, should therefore be impossible.

The third major advance is that "violations are automatically sanctioned," says Watzke.

"Such cases no longer go before any courts, but misconduct with the sum x or y immediately triggers a corresponding penalty." First in the form of clearly noticeable payments or point deductions, in the case of repetition, a forced relegation in international competitions follows, for example from the champions League to the Europa League.

Give way in many places

With these measures, UEFA could at least "put a slight brake on salaries and transfer fees," says Bayern board member Kahn, but the big step to really stop the much-criticized developments in professional football was not even on the table.

Attempts to change things substantially are futile in the European Club Association (ECA), where the continent's most powerful clubs have negotiated the reform and Qatari Nasser al-Khelaifi is chairman.

More tradition-conscious clubs from the Bundesliga and smaller nations had to give way in many places to the representatives of the Premier League, Serie A and Paris St. Germain, who would like to continue to receive unlimited amounts of millions from states, oligarchs, sheikhs, funds and billionaires.

In addition, it remains to be seen how good the new rules are in terms of craftsmanship.

The old financial fair play had so many weaknesses that the requirements could easily be circumvented, and even with the "financial sustainability" regulations, nobody can rule out that clubs are looking for loopholes, but that is now "much more difficult," says Watzke.

After all, economic activities that are checked are “now objectifiable”.

In return, the Germans and their allies had to accept "that the framework was set relatively broadly", which will further weaken the Bundesliga's competitiveness.

Not even the current world situation has led to a rethink.

He was "glad that no German club is in the hands of a Russian oligarch and that states like Saudi Arabia still don't have access to German football," says Watzke, because such connections would "take revenge at some point".

But in England, Paris and Italy, a number of clubs have long been far too dependent on their sometimes dubious supporters.