Premier League hit by new Uefa rules- 3/4 Must Cut

The Times May 28, 2010

Michel Platini’s ‘financial fair play’ seems unlikely to achieve the desired equality Oliver Kay

When Michel Platini surveys the European football landscape, whether it be from Uefa’s headquarters on the shores of Lake Geneva or from the VIP area at one of the game’s cathedrals in Manchester, Madrid or Milan, he sees inequality all around.

Worse than that, though, Platini sees excess and brinksmanship. He sees clubs living as extravagantly as the French aristocracy under Louis XVI. He sees transfer fees and players’ wages spiralling out of control. He sees, as he puts it, the football being inflated and inflated and inflated and he knows that either it is deflated gently, but forcefully, or it explodes.

The climate is right for revolution and the era of dangerous excess should be brought to an end by Uefa’s unanimous vote last night to accept Platini’s “financial fair play” regulations. With spending strictly linked to revenue from 2012 onwards, with only minimal additional investment permitted from owners, clubs will be protected from the kind of self-destructive spending that has taken Portsmouth to the verge of liquidation.

Any measure that protects football clubs from their worst excesses is to be applauded, but Platini’s pursuit of a level playing field began with a bid to restore equality. It started with a desire to restore genuine competitiveness across the board — so that Aston Villa and Everton could challenge once more to be champions of England, so that Ajax and Celtic could compete once more to be champions of Europe — and, at a domestic level at least, there is a danger that “financial fair play” merely reinforces existing class divisions.


The eight Premier League clubs with the largest revenue in the past financial year were, in order: Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester City, Everton and Aston Villa. In the season that followed, not only did those clubs constitute the league’s top eight but their final position in the league table was a maximum of two places away from their placing in the revenue table. Given that the status quo was preserved and will indeed be strengthened by prize money, gate receipts and commercial income, it is hard to see those eight clubs being overtaken any time soon.

If the new regulations promised to break that cartel, to turn the top domestic leagues into the kind of meritocracy that Platini enjoyed when Saint-Etienne were dominating French football in the early 1970s, with Borussia Mönchengladbach doing likewise across the border in West Germany, we would all be celebrating. Instead, financial fair play threatens to reinforce those class divisions, making the possibility of upward mobility, of the type enjoyed by Fulham and, regrettably, Portsmouth in recent years more remote than ever.

That Portsmouth are cited as an example will bring a wry smile to Platini’s face. The chaos that has arisen at Fratton Park over the past two years — since Alexandre Gaydamak, the former owner, sought to recoup his investment in the light of the FA Cup triumph in 2008 and the economic crisis that followed — is precisely the kind of situation that Platini is determined to avoid.

But “living the dream” — to borrow the infamous phrase uttered by Peter Ridsdale, the former Leeds United chairman — is precisely what Fulham are doing, to widespread acclaim and romance, with almost £200 million of loans from Mohamed Al Fayed, their owner.

Under “financial fair play”, there would be no repeat of the Portsmouth situation, but nor would there be the kind of fairytale enjoyed by Fulham’s supporters this season, as they reached the Europa League final, and which City supporters confidently believe lies ahead under Sheikh Mansour.

In less than two years, City have bought players such as Gareth Barry, Robinho, Emmanuel Adebayor and Carlos Tévez — with far more to follow — and, their historical penchant for hilarious failure notwithstanding, they will surely soon compete for the Premier League title. Come 2012, though, what next? Their spending — including a wage bill that will have continued to soar in the meantime — will be strictly linked to turnover.

At least City, having got rich at just the right time, will be the right side of the class divide. For those on the other side, more than ever, they will know their place.

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/european_football/article7138671.ece


The Times May 22, 2010
Model armies are paying the price for actions of mercenaries

Patrick Barclay

Of all the changes in football over the past 15 years — let’s call it the post-Bosman era — one of the most profound is the decline of team-building.

It used to be said of supposedly underachieving managers that they didn’t know their best team. And yet Sir Alex Ferguson presided over a trio of championships from 2006-07 without ever, I suspect, knowing or caring what his strongest team was; he just picked an ever-changing XI from the squad, weighing the opposition and giving rests to those in perceived need.

That United, because of Ferguson-instilled habits, almost invariably looked more of a team than most is testimony to their manager’s qualities, including his ability to adjust to changing times. But any good judge with a memory would have found Ferguson’s most recent generation less of a balanced footballing force, even with Cristiano Ronaldo, than the group who won his first couple of titles in the mid-1990s.

They roll off the tongue: Peter Schmeichel in goal; Steve Bruce and Gary Pallister, with Denis Irwin on one side and Paul Parker battling injury on the other; Roy Keane, Andrei Kanchelskis, Ryan Giggs, Brian McClair, Eric Cantona and Mark Hughes.

It is no slight to remark that they had a mechanical quality. For machines entertain, as Ferguson, who grew up with the great Celtic of Jock Stein, would require reminding least of all.

Today most managers have to build in haste, and it shows. To ascribe this wholly to “Bosman”, or the otherwise obscure Belgian footballer of that name whose legal campaign gave players the right to move without a transfer fee at the end of their contracts, would be facile, but it is true that Ajax, who won the Champions League in 1995, will never know what history they could have made if Louis van Gaal had been able to keep that exceptionally young team together.

Almost every player spent his peak elsewhere: Edwin van der Sar (still enjoying it with United), Clarence Seedorf, Edgar Davids, Patrick Kluivert, Marc Overmars, Kanu, Frank and Ronald de Boer. The process of gravitation to the biggest clubs may have happened before Bosman — after all, Johan Cruyff and Johan Neeskens went to Barcelona in the 1970s — but it would have been more gradual and less crudely disruptive to the rhythm of a great club.

Better for football, too, because the game is one of relationships: triangles, as it used to be said. Only a very few clubs can afford to build a team out of them today and, of course, the most glorious example is that of Barcelona, who have the twin hold of money and cultural identity over their players.

There are, from time to time, areas of outstanding football beauty at other clubs who strive for the long term, such as Arsène Wenger’s Arsenal — and to see Thierry Henry, Robert Pires and Ashley Cole in triangular operation down the Highbury left was truly a joy to the eye — but by and large the game is too much about compromise and cobbling because everyone and his agent forever seems in a rush to better himself.

Ask Wenger, who, just as a potent team come to maturity, faces the loss of the young man who holds them together. But maybe that is a bad example because Cesc Fàbregas, whom Wenger plucked from Barcelona in his mid-teens, wants only to return to his proper Catalan place. So let’s ask Martin O’Neill what he thinks of Manchester City preparing to relieve him of James Milner.

We don’t have to. We just have to put ourselves in the places of O’Neill, by common consent an excellent manager, and Randy Lerner, almost as widely acknowledged to be a model owner; their Aston Villa have no sooner got over the loss to City of Gareth Barry by moving Milner into his pivotal midfield role when City, with their Middle Eastern riches, come calling again for Milner.

O’Neill and Lerner don’t want City’s money. They just want to be left alone.

It is not going to happen. It would be more likely if Uefa were to carry through its plans for “financial fair play” — clubs being allowed to spend only what they earn — in the most extreme form, which would involve disallowing artificial injections of money such as gifts or suspiciously generous sponsorships.

This would mean regulation to a degree the Premier League regards as anathema. The League has a free-market philosophy that Richard Scudamore, its engaging and highly able chief executive, is only too happy to espouse and I confess that the thought of City proceeding to do to United and Chelsea what Chelsea, after Roman Abramovich’s arrival, did to United and Arsenal is an attractive one.

But must they succeed at the expense of Villa, who have the same ambitions — and a less inflationary, anti-competitive and anti-football way of doing it?

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/patrick_barclay/article7133350.ece