European football to scrap Financial Fair Play for new spending rules
European football’s governing body Uefa is set to ditch its controversial Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules in favour of new cost-control regulations that will limit clubs’ spending to a proportion of revenue.
Teams will only be allowed to spend 70 per cent of their income on transfers and wages under the new rules, which will be phased in over a period of three years starting next season, according to reports.
Uefa had discussed modifying FFP by introducing a hard salary cap in conjunction with a so-called luxury tax, whereby clubs pay a fine if they breaching spending limits.
Instead, however, they have opted for a system that is likely to cement the dominance of the richest teams.
The change is expected to be rubber-stamped at a vote of Uefa’s executive committee on 7 April.
For the first year of the new rules, 2022-23, clubs will be allowed to spend 90 per cent of their revenue on wages and transfers.
In 2023-24 the limit will fall to 80 per cent and for 2024-25 it will drop again to 70 per cent and be held at that level.
Uefa introduced FFP in 2010 with an emphasis on ensuring clubs broke even. Although it succeeded in making clubs across Europe more solvent, it failed to curb the dominance of the game’s richest clubs.
The new rules look unlikely to stimulate greater competitive balance either, since they allow teams with the most resources to spend more than others.