In 2009 the UEFA introduced the financial fair play rule! The idea behind this rule was more or less to protect the club from ... themselves! Since the introduction of the fair play rules, the clubs are not allowed to spend more than they earn in their pursuit for success!

The rule in short!

From wikipedia: Only a club's outgoings in transfers, employee benefits (including wages), amortisation of transfers, finance costs and dividends will be counted over income from gate receipts, TV revenue, advertising, merchandising, disposal of tangible fixed assets, finance, sales of players and prize money.

There are some small prints also. It is for instance not allowed to sell an advertising space at incredible prices. Otherwise team owners or very wealthy fans could foul the income side by paying enormous sums of money for a small advertisement board!

The sactions

There are 8 possible sactions:

  • A reprimand or warning
  • A fine
  • Points deduction
  • Withholding revenue from an UEFA competition
  • Prohibition to register new players for UEFA competitions
  • Restriction how many players a team can register for an UEFA competition
  • Disqualification from a competition in progress and Exclusion from future competitions 

So now we are all on par with the rules. At least I assume that!

Bypassing them!

Now during the transfer window, ingenious construction are being made to bypass these rules.

Let's have a look at 2 common practices!

Loan with an obligation to buy!

The idea behind this is simple. The team who want to buy a player maybe has the funds, but the purchase could bring them into problems with the financal fair play rules. So the construction is that they do loan the player for a year for a certain amount of money, with the obligation to buy him in the next season. This way the fee is not included in the records for this season, but it moved to the next season.

The best example of this was when PSG did want to buy Mbappe in the same transfer season as they already purchased Neymar for a fee of 220M Euro. So they first did loan Mbappe from Monaco and purchased him the season after for a fee of 120M.

This transfer markt Inter Milan is trying to set up a same construction to get Lukaku on board. But in this case, it just could be that Inter isn't capable of paying the full fee at once. Inter has now offered a 2 year loan deal for a fee of £9 M, with the obligation to buy him for £53.8 M two seasons from now!

The loan with obligated buy back option!

This one was new for me and will be used probably more in the next season. This construction is more suited for promising youngster!

The construction here is that team A sells a player to team B for let's say 10M euro. Team B is forced to buy him back after an agreed time for the same 10M Euro. Team A had the plans to loan the player to team b any way. So it is possible that the buy back option will have the cost of the original fee minus the loan coasts. Team A does this because they do need the money this season to not breach the financial play rules.

An construction like this is currently be set-up between (again) Inter Milan and Standard Liege. Inter Milan really needs some extra funds to sign Lukaku withou breaching the financial fair play rules. The player in question is Zino Vanheusden. He already play on loan with Standard in the previous season and Standard really did want to loan him for another. Inter does want to loan him out another year, but do need the funds. So the construction here is that Standard will buy him now for a fee of 12.8M Euro. Probably Inter will buy him back next summer for a simular fee.
There is no reason Standard could purchase such a young promising player at this fee. This is around 25 to 30% of their annual income!

So, if we look at the bypass possibilities above does have the financial fair play rule any added value according to you?

Cheers,
Peter