BREAKING FINANCIAL RULES AND REAPING BENEFITS
Football club Manchester City have been found by UEFA, football’s European governing body, guilty of serious breaches of its Financial Fair Play regulations (FFP). FFP are designed to stop clubs spending more money than they earn and prevent financial difficulty. It is notable that Manchester City, in 2014 were also found guilty of breaches of FFP and were fined EURO 49 million. This time the fine is Euro 30 million plus a two-year ban from competing in Champions League football – a potentially much more damaging punishment. Are the FFP being deliberately flouted?
Manchester City’s breaches included the overstating of the value of sponsorship arrangements with companies associated with the ruler(s) of Abu Dhabi such as Etihad Airlines and Etisalat. The ruler(s) of Abu Dhabi also own Manchester City and it is hard to ignore those relationships. It appears that Manchester City will appeal the decision, not on the basis of the substance of the breaches but alleging that the judicial process of UEFA was flawed.
If the behaviour was deliberately in breach of the FFP and the senior executive management and owners of the club knew that, then they have cheated. And the result may be that the club acquired star players they may not otherwise have been able to and won competitions or eliminated other teams from competitions unfairly. If so, one expects the whole football world to be up in arms, including the UK and FA and Premier league bosses: their reaction is muted to date.
Sadly, a comparable case in this season in Rugby Union is that of Saracens club, heavily fined and now to be demoted from the Premier League, for breaching the salary cap rules, again not for the first time. And again, thus enabling them to field players they may not have otherwise been able to afford, and perhaps they won competitions or eliminated other teams from competitions unfairly. Again, if the owners or senior executive managers knew of the rule breaches, they cheated. The benefits reaped are in these cases, not dissimilar from the effects of theft. Inevitably, also, there is scepticism whether these clubs are the only professional football and rugby clubs who have broken the relevant rules.
UNDERMINED VALUES
It must be asked whether, if senior executives or owners of clubs are complicit in cheating, they should be allowed to run or own professional sports clubs. Should there be a “fit and proper test” applied to owners and managers, where cheating is a disqualification event? Failing that, the expressed high values that sports such as Rugby and Football espouse, which include integrity, are seriously undermined just as they and other sports are by drug abuse. Society needs sport not least for the role models it produces on the fields of play, particularly for youngsters seeking hope and aspiration. Genuine role models will be harder to come by, and worthwhile values devalued, if those with power in the sport are seen to be cheating. This presents a challenge for sport regulators whose own credibility is at stake in the face of any cheating they may find, among other things, to show they are not in thrall in some way to the cheats themselves.
