Financial Fair Play

[Coasterfreek]

Saw that Man City news. Wow.

 

[Alex de Large]

This is what happens when you spend 65millions on right-backs just to sit them on the bench, while other big teams can't even waste 65m on a starter.

 

[Lui]

"Pep pays the piper" better be the headline if there is any journalistic integrity left in this world.

Sent from my SM-A520W using Tapatalk

 

[ElDuccio]

welcome back cancelo cunt

 

[Forzanerazzurri]

Man City got a 2 year penalty from Europe.

Appeal will probably be won and it'll be at most 1 season I guess if any. Even if it's one year, I guess we have to welcome Guardiola to Serie A, probably for the Gobbi.

HAHAHAHAHA.

PSG is next.

 

[delaurentis]

Man City got a 2 year penalty from Europe.

Appeal will probably be won and it'll be at most 1 season I guess if any. Even if it's one year, I guess we have to welcome Guardiola to Serie A, probably for the Gobbi.

No, I think Guardiola will stay at City. It gives him another excuse why he couldn't win the CL that year.

 

[jamsieboy86]

Some journo's reporting that the Premier League could give Man City a points deduction this season, which could rule them out of next seasons Champions League regardless of any appeal on the UEFA case to CAS.

If the Premier League kicks Man City out of the League for this or deducts enough points to relegate them, which seems highly unlikely, they would have to start over in League 2 as per the new Football League rules introduced last year.

 

[brehme1989]

Can you share this rule?

 

[Alex de Large]

Some journo's reporting that the Premier League could give Man City a points deduction this season, which could rule them out of next seasons Champions League regardless of any appeal on the UEFA case to CAS.

If the Premier League kicks Man City out of the League for this or deducts enough points to relegate them, which seems highly unlikely, they would have to start over in League 2 as per the new Football League rules introduced last year.

lol not happening but i wish it was true

 

[jamsieboy86]

Can you share this rule?

I read it in this article, haven't actually read the rule directly from the Football League's rulebook, there are a few verified journalists saying it on twitter too.

https://www.independent.co.uk/sport...e-premier-points-uefa-fair-play-a9336946.html

I'd be highly surprised if the Premier League kicked them out. Perhaps I was wrong about a points deduction which relegates them resulting in League 2. From re-reading the article I think they have have to be kicked out of the Premier League to be sent to League 2.

Of course most of this is just hearsay and speculation at this stage, but imagine if City were kicked out and had to start in League 2, it would send a hell of a message to clubs trying to cheat the FFP system.

- - - Updated - - -

lol not happening but i wish it was true

Which is precisely why I said it seems highly unlikely, but it would be hilarious.

 

[GenDire]

"Pep pays the piper" better be the headline if there is any journalistic integrity left in this world.

Sent from my SM-A520W using Tapatalk

The Sun - "Pep portrays pretend-priced patronage, pays the piper"

 

[.h.]

Either way, I think there should be an onus on football clubs to be sustainable. It's not unreasonable. Arguably not having FFP means you get more 'billionaire playthings', whereas one of the best ways to grow your revenue with FFP is increased community engagement (attendance, merchandising, etc)

Of course what happens in reality is you get a new sponsorship deal from a related company (Jeep/Juve anyone?) that helps you to increase your revenues. If we can get through this next 18 months OK, we'll actually be in an independently healthy situation.

I really want this shirt sponsor mess resolved as the top priority after the next tranche of funding though.



I just dont really agree with the mechanism of FFP - it prevents any real investment, and you lock in the top clubs to basically forever be top clubs. I would rather see, say, salary caps as a function of last year's turnover or projected turnover, maybe even salary + amortisation cannot exceed 50% of regular turnover (i.e. before exceptionals). Something like that. I'm not exactly sure.

The other one (but this is not done in industry for good reasons) is to evaluate on a cash basis rather than a balance sheet basis. I wonder what the ramifications would be if you impose that football businesses are cashflow positive (e.g. ignoring equity increases), but no other FFP balancing constraints.

Maybe the other solution is that football clubs expenses are a function of their matchday, broadcasting, and prize money revenue. Each country might get a separate multiplier based on historics (e.g. Germany typically has very high commercial revenue percentages).

So for example you might say in Italy, it's a 1.4x multiplier - so sum up matchday, broadcasting, prize money, and you get a 1.4x multiplier. That multiplier is trying to 'factor in' your reasonable commercial revenues, so you cant inflate them to fuck using external companies and so on. But then there's the obvious risk that you overestimate on a cashflow basis...

I dunno, messy.

 

[brehme1989]

FFP is as you said a status quo lock.

Salary caps aren't helping either because you will still have ways to circumvent them. X player gets paid 10m but then has an indirect sponsorship of 50m if he plays for Y team.


The only solution to promote parity, which is in line with the history of the sport, is to enforce strict foreigner limits throughout Europe.

But they are not interested in parity. Having a handful of wealthy clubs that will always be at a top level sells better than seeing new faces and being forced to watch a bunch of different competitions to enjoy them.
Concentration of talent is what they're aiming for and UEFA has served itself a Euroleague system whether they actively attempted this or they just randomly coincided.

 

[.h.]

I dont get the argument around a foreigner limit - doesnt that just foster Juve, Bayern, etc, collecting the very best local talent (as they do already, tbh)?

I do appreciate that quality will be proportional to gametime, so it will help generate overall better Italian players, but the top talent will probably still end up pooled at the largest clubs

The other option would be to enforce quite strictly on U-18 transfers, and have really high club/home grown requirements per club. 12 club grown players, 18 country grown means Juve cant pool 'that' many of Italy's most talented youth players

I appreciate that sounds a lot like a foreigner limit, but unlimited intra-country transfers is quite a different thing

 

[brehme1989]

I dont get the argument around a foreigner limit - doesnt that just foster Juve, Bayern, etc, collecting the very best local talent (as they do already, tbh)?

I do appreciate that quality will be proportional to gametime, so it will help generate overall better Italian players, but the top talent will probably still end up pooled at the largest clubs

There's a finite number of great domestic players. They also do not all want to play for the same team.

There's an unlimited number of players you can bring using the EU status. By restricting foreigners, you're telling Real Madrid and Juventus that they cannot have 18 foreigners, but 3-5-8 whatever the limit is.

Importing players will become a very important part of the team, offloading domestic talent will prove much tougher, so you will restrict transfer movement as well as the core players will mostly remain intact and you may see the foreigner slots change every 1-2 years as it was the case in the past.

Also, all these foreign players will have to go somewhere, meaning that if they join midtable teams, their quality improves and the quality gap becomes narrower.


It's a no brainer, this is the only solution to parity. You can never stop the wealthiest teams from buying more players, but you can restrict what that money can buy them.

Assume that UEFA comes and says that within the next 5 season, it wants to return to a roster limit based on NT eligibility or nationality (less strict, due to 2nd passports). Let's say that they will decide on the magic number of 8, which is what Ukraine, Russia and Turkey had for years, more or less. I think Russia and Ukraine have 5 and 8 respectively now, whilst iirc Turkey decided to go YOLO and allows 17, in line with all other European leagues due to UEFA's 4+4+17 rule in their registration.

English clubs have the advantage that Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and English players would qualify as nationals, although UEFA did not allow that in the past, so a Scottish player was considered a foreigner in UEFA competitions. But let's assume it's less strict.

Manchester City: Kyle Walker (30), John Stones (26), Raheem Sterling (26), Phil Foden (20), Scott Carson (35)

That's just it. All other players are foreigners. City can keep signing whomever they want under the current system and a few foreigners qualify as 'club trained' now (Zinchenko + Eric Garcia).

Their transfers this season were:
Ferran Torres (Valencia, Spain)
Ruben Dias (Benfica, Portugal)
Nathan Ake (Bournemouth, Netherlands)

All foreigners, not sure if Nathan Ake has a British passport, but still. They did not sign a single British player.

In fact, out of the usual top 6 English clubs, the only GB transfers were Chillwell (Leicester to Chelsea) and Joe Hart (free transfer for Tottenham), with Matt Doherty being the only other British Isles transfer. That's top club football for you, there's zero transfer activity with domestic players.

The reason is that they're not as good, so if you can afford better players, you will get them. This means that if you're a more wealthy, more popular club, you will buy/import the better players, whilst your rivals are fighting with the scrubs.

So what would have happened? They'd buy domestic players. But how many are there to be shared amongst all these clubs? These people will want to play regularly to earn an NT spot, they'd not sign for a top dog to sit on the bench!

Why do you think Roma's players still have this mentality? Totti grew up in this type of football and he has influenced the next generation. Nesta actually never wanted to leave Lazio either. Totti's run at Roma is inspiring their youth players actually, but it feels crazy. Look back at all the 'one club man' players and tell me how many do you see that have started their career in the late 2000s.

If you do not see how this changes the playing field, I honestly don't know how else to put it, it's too darn obvious that this has destroyed the competition in football.

And sure, we benefited from this in the 2010 season, but what we see in the last 10 years is beyond pathetic. And ironically, we have switched strategies and are more in line with "proper" football management than this gloryhunting style. Even under Moratti we barely did this [post-Lippi mania for 1.5 seasons, then we tried to sign many Italians and had a lot of players in the 2002 World Cup, then post-Calciopoli we switched strategies again and post-Tripleta we just fucked up in style], yet everyone thought we were doing it constantly because it was still so alien and teams like Arsenal were called 'French' or whatever.

If you want top leagues to have more parity, mid-tier leagues to be competitive in Europe and smaller leagues to get wealthier, this is the only confirmed route we have.

 

[.h.]

but if I were to take your City example, then, wouldnt they just sign all the best English talent? What's to stop them from poaching (for arguments sake), Dier, Rice, Philips, Bellingham, Kane, DCL?

I cant see how a foreigner limit does anything other than pooling the limited number of great domestic players into the top teams, even more so than now.

I'd agree you probably reduce the overall quality of the top teams, so the gaps are smaller, you'd probably pull down the average level of football quite heavily too.


I'd love someone to generate a list of the 132 english players with the most minutes in thie Premiership this season (that's 6 per club with an assumption of 5 foreigners all in the starting XI). I'd bet by the time you get to 130-ish, the quality is pretty damn low, and that's before you hit bench. Or for Italy as well tbh.



Thats why I was saying something like a club grown limit (i think it'd have many flaws anyway) would be quite an interesting way to push it. You need to have 10 players in your 25 squad who were at the club since before they signed a professional contract. We'd be hoarding Dimarco, Pinamonti, Bonnazzoli, etc, like it was out of fashion, and it'd mean they'd get some good development time probably too.

That being said, Milan and Roma would be probably the best teams in the league then.

 

[brehme1989]

but if I were to take your City example, then, wouldnt they just sign all the best English talent? What's to stop them from poaching (for arguments sake), Dier, Rice, Philips, Bellingham, Kane, DCL?

I cant see how a foreigner limit does anything other than pooling the limited number of great domestic players into the top teams, even more so than now.

I'd agree you probably reduce the overall quality of the top teams, so the gaps are smaller, you'd probably pull down the average level of football quite heavily too.

What's from stopping them? The fact that Tottenham already does not want to sell Dier and Kane.

What's from stopping them stacking all the top players? The fact that there are other PL clubs that could afford these players.

The quality argument is subjective.

Having a top team that can field 2 lineups and potentially finish 1st and 2nd with both lineups is unfair competition and it shows that there's a problem with the quality of the league.


In Russia, you have this system, with just 8 foreigners and the rest being Russians. Zenit and CSKA Moskva are the wealthiest clubs.

CSKA last won the league in 2015-16. Almost won it the next year, but collapsed since then. Zenit is looking very strong, with 2 wins on the trot and going for a third.

Zenit barely has 7 players in the national team, only 4 of those from the latest team play abroad (Golovin and Miranchuk amongst them from the more known names). Out of these 7, only 3 started in yesterday's game. Sure, vs Malta, but it was an away game and the first of the qualifiers, so they probably fielded their best possible team.

What Zenit can do, is buy players like Malcom, Sebastian Driussi and Wilmar Barrios, whereas CSKA has players like Nikola Vlasic and Salomon Rondon. And even got Adolfo Gaich, but they loaned him out to Benevento as they couldn't afford to keep him due to the quotas.

It's really the only league that could be used for this. We have several wealthy clubs, a couple are much wealthier than the next ones and we have a foreigners limit with no EU benefits.

Zenit was the richest club since the mid 2000s afaik. Back then, it was just 5 foreign spots iirc.
Let's say from 2005 season, where CSKA won the UEFA Cup. Up until 2011-12, the league was decided within the calendar year, so it's actually 2007 for Zenit, but sorted it for this reason.

Zenit won (2007-8, 2010-11, 2011-12, 2014-15, 2018-19, 2019-20.. probably also 2020-21 but a few games left)
CSKA Moscow won (2005-6, 2006-7, 2012-3, 2015-6)
Rubin Kazan won (2008-9, 2009-10)
Spartak Moscow (2016-17)
Lokomotiv Moscow won (2017-18)

Just for comparison, throughout the 90s you only had one team winning, Spartak Moscow, with 9 league wins from 1992-3 to 2001-2, meaning that only once they did not win. A team called Alania won the league in 1995.

CSKA Moscow finished 4th both times that Zenit won their last two and now are joint 3rd with two other teams, so 0 points difference from 3rd to 5th place.



What this shows is that money does not guarantee success in the league table when you restrict the rosters.


Imagine an Inter example. We can use a halfway real life example, as we have a restriction with the non-EU spot. You can only sign one of these players. So you have a budget of whatever amount and you're ending up bringing someone like Jonathan. You're stuck with him. No do-overs, and you missed your chance to sign Achraf Hakimi [ignoring the Spanish passport] because you have filled your foreigner slots.

Inter actually did suffer from this in 1993-94.
We were allowed to use only 3 foreigners, but we had 4. We had Ruben Sosa, Dennis Bergkamp, Igor Shalimov and Wim Jonk. One of them had to sit out. Same season, Barcelona were favorites vs Milan in the Champions League final, against Milan, but they had to leave one of Romario, Koeman, Laudrup and Stoichkov out. They left Laudrup out, who was their main engine that year. And they couldn't cope. Milan actually had 7 foreigners that year and had to leave 4 out each game. You could still have lots of players, as long as they didn't care about missing out on many games and possibly important ones.

The wealthiest teams will still have more great players, but if you restrict the number they can buy and the number they can use, it's helping competition. Quality is driven by high levels of competition. Why do I care if Bayern can win the league in their sleep? Bundesliga was a league where the decider was in the last minutes, the same applied with Italy and Spain in the 90s and late 2000s. There was suspense, suspense increases interest.

All you have now is people who don't really care about football but merely watch it as they watch some Master Chef or reality shows.
You have clubs that are not part of their community anymore.
You have players who don't care about their teams, and even sport.
And a bucket of money following everything.

 

[.h.]

Well, tbh, I think City dont need Dier. They havent yet needed Kane, but I wouldnt consider it impossible they actually signed him depending on Aguero/etc. They've managed to get Kyle Walker from Tottenham as it stands, its hardly a club that doesnt have a history of selling some of its best players.

 

[brehme1989]

Well, tbh, I think City dont need Dier. They havent yet needed Kane, but I wouldnt consider it impossible they actually signed him depending on Aguero/etc. They've managed to get Kyle Walker from Tottenham as it stands, its hardly a club that doesnt have a history of selling some of its best players.

It still does not matter though.

Just do this exercise.

Pick the current Inter squad and enforce a 5 foreigners limit. Who do you keep? For the record let's just say that Handanovic and Vecino have Italian passports or could acquire one if needed, so they can remain without posing burden to the quota.


Then do this exercise for Juventus, Milan, Napoli, Bayern, Dortmund, Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester United, Tottenham, Arsenal, PSG, Lyon, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid. Then tell me if you think it's possible that one team can hoard all the top domestic players.

 

[.h.]

Thats a really good question.

If its okay with you, I'd like to do it in a slightly different angle, actually.

If each team is allowed 5 foreigners, therefore 6 non-foreigners in the starting line up, then that means your top 4 teams = (for arguments sake) the best 24 national players. Obviously this completely ignores bench, and players like Verratti who have moved abroad.


In Italy, the 24th best national player according to transfermarkt is Cragno. Around him you have Politano, Calabria, Lazzarri, Di Lorenzo, Bernadeschi, Castrovilli.

If you expand that to 15 players per top team, you'll end up with 60th - the 60th most expensive Italian is Zappacosta, with D'ambrosio, Salcedo, Gabbia, Biraghi, Ferrari, Lasagna (etc) around him.

Full list available here, fyi:

https://www.transfermarkt.com/spiel...jahrgang=0&land_id=75&kontinent_id=0&yt0=Show


For England, lets repeat:

The 24th best english player is Alli, with Harvey Barnes, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Ollie Watkins around him. If we take that out to 60, you get to a bunch of people I've never even heard of.



If we said 132 (6 players x 20 teams, so again, fully ignoring the bench), in Italy you've got players at the level of Okaka, Destro, Forte, Cerri. In England, the only name I recognise off hand is Lallana, Delph, Angel Gomes, Danny Wellbeck.


I'm not sure what the right number of people per team to pick, clearly its not 20 (e.g. the top 20 players wont all be at United, a number of them would start elsewhere), but that squad depth at the bottom of the league starts to look really fucking thin quite quickly imho.



FWIW, if you extend this to 10 players, and look at the top 40 italian players, you quickly hit Pinamonti, Gagliardini, Mandragora, Izzo, Acerbi, Zaccagni, Emerson, etc.



To be clear, you could kinda make this work, but for example in the top 40 players, there are (FOR ARGUMENTS SAKE taking Juve, Milan, Napoli, Inter), 23 of those players are NOT at one of the big 4 clubs, so for the big 4 to hoarde those players, they will literally have to take more top talents from the national players than they do now. By a long way.


I dunno WTF we can call the top 4 english teams, but for simplicity, lets say Liverpool, United, Chelsea, City. They've probably got the most UK bias on their players atm anyway.

Top 40 UK players - 22 of them are at non-big-4 clubs (by that definition)