According to the New York Times, UEFA have settled on the replacement for Financial Fair Play rules, but they would only further benefit Premier League sides and harm Serie A clubs.

There have been discussions for over a year to set up a new model replacing FFP, but it would seem as if UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin will not get the salary cap he had hoped for.

That proved impossible when dealing with European employment law, which was already behind the Bosman ruling allowing players to become free agents.

Instead, it’s reported the soccer-related spending will not be able to go above 70 per cent of income.

That means both wages and amortisation of transfer fees for that season cannot breach 70 per cent of revenue.

It would be a huge problem in particular for Italy, where even the wage bill is often over 70 per cent of the income.

The New York Times notes this system, to be named Financial Sustainability Regulations, would only further benefit the Premier League clubs, who already far outspend every other league due to their massive – and set to get even bigger – television rights deal.

Clubs will be given three years to move towards the new rules, so initially able to spend up to 90 per cent of their revenue.

There could also be some flexibility of up to €10m in certain circumstances.

The biggest change could well be in the penalties, which could see clubs demoted from the Champions League to Europa League for breaching financial rules, or made to begin the new format tournaments with a points deduction.

18 thought on “New FFP could benefit Premier League and further damage Serie A”
  1. It’s a matter of time before EPL becomes the true Super League. All clubs outside of EPL will become training grounds and used for player development for the 20 EPL clubs. In 2-3 years even clubs like Burnley and Southampton will be bigger than Real and Bayern.

  2. Fanatic! Even more English dominance. It is not England’s fault that the Italians can not run their own league and that no one of value wants to invest. But the Italians will only continue to feel sorry for themselves instead of trying to market and develop their league.

  3. That would be fun if other European nations create their own Super League and exclude PL teams from it and get rid of UEFA! UEFA is pushing for PL monopoly for a while now.

  4. The whole of Italian football knows that stadia investment and infrastructure is the way out of this quagmire to increase revenue but the powers that be will continue to drag their heels and find enough bureaucratic measures to prevent it from happening.

    We are doomed in our Serie A bubble. As Mike said, and it is already partly true….Italy will continue to be a feeder league for the PL.

    I have no issue with the PL being the top of the food chain but Italian football must give themselves a fighting chance and fight in that top division too. The excellent scouting and amount of players (Salah, Alison, Lukaku, etc) bought by the PL the last decade proves that Serie A has the quality but we need the resources to keep them here. Cut the red tape with stadiums!

  5. I am starting to think that Italy, Spain, Germany and France should basically combine and form a Continental League excluding the Premier League. They can still have relegation, a second division, etc. Start in 2024-25 and announce that the Top 5 from each league in 2023-2024 will form the first division, places 6-10 will form the second division, etc. It sounds a bit loopy but something needs to happen to keep football interesting and retain a relatively level playing field.

  6. FFP has always been about protecting incumbents. People who support it for “fair play” and “equality” are useful idiots.

    But there are two issues at play here.

    Serie A would not necessarily be any better off relative to the Prem if FFP was abolished. That’s because the Prem is a better sporting product to invest in.

    England is a better place to do business for many reasons including building new stadiums which is vital for television deals.

    What the abolition of FFP would do is raise the level of all leagues by allowing new investors to pump billions into smaller clubs, thereby challenging the big boys.

    It would make football more exciting and unpredictable. We’ve seen that effect in the Prem with the likes of City and Chelsea but abolition of FFP would supercharge that process for the Prem and Serie A too (but less so).

    So bottom line is Serie A will continue to lag until there’s serious political/economic reform. Just ask James Pallotta about that…

  7. I’m with you JM. A continental league is the way forward – if marketed right and if clubs stop selling their stars to the EPL it can become bigger than the EPL The Spanish clubs, would join, but it remains to be seen if clubs like Bayern, PSG, Milan and Inter have the courage that Juve, Real and Barca have to make necessary change for the game’s sake. I personally am sick and tired of seeing the Serie A become the feeder league to the EPL which I don’t even follow. People on this site continually criticise Agnelli over the Super League but he recognises where football is going and it’s not a very nice place. If the Super League is better thought out and more inclusive it can be the lightning rod to get rid of the corrupt UEFA run by the incompetent Ceferin and his cronies.

  8. @Frankie – I also think that all things being equal most top players would prefer to play in Italy, Spain, or even France for cultural reasons. Better food, better weather, better women. The advantages that the EPL has is that it is in English which is the world language, and of course its newer stadiums and the big money and tv contracts that go with it. If Italy can get their act together with stadia and Italy, Spain, and at least Germany can unite on this, I would view a Continental League (with divisions and relegation) as even more attractive to TV deals than the current Premier League.

  9. @Mike

    No serious player wants to play for Burnley over RM or Bayern, so don’t worry lol. Only wasters join small epl teams – and the epl is welcome to them.

    @JM

    I was thinking that too about a European league that excludes England and lets the rest join, with tough relegation and various leagues to get promoted from.
    I imagine a league with all the top names from Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Holland, Portugal etc would be very attractive for TV companies. And as you say, players (and their wives lol) would prefer to live in those countries over England.
    Only problem is I’d still like them to play English sides in some sort of CL-like competition.
    Hard to know how it’d work in full.

  10. What about a Euro league without the epl, as I and others mentioned above:

    3 or 4 from Italy, Germany, Spain, Holland, France, Portugal, 1 or 2 from a few more nations.

    Have a 20-team league with tough relegation (4 teams down), then a second division with another 20 teams of a slightly smaller size (Atalanta, Sporting, Feyenoord, Lyon, R Sociedad, just for an example).

    Then have the normal domestic leagues feeding the division 2 with play-offs to get promoted to it.

    It could be a huge league if kept competitive (none of this no relegation nonsense we heard of with that dumb super league idea)

  11. Wasn’t FFP non-existent in practise anyway?
    They’re constantly tinkering with the laws, but it doesn’t matter. It always stay’s the same with 1 league dominant + the few biggest, capitalist team’s wInning the majority of the trophies?
    In the 90’s Serie A was by far + away the most dominant league, so much so that UEFA were alway’s changing laws to seemingly try + take power away from Italy. Then Spain took over. Now it’s the EPL which is completely dominant. But it’ll inevitably change again. The EPL could implode like Serie A did. All it’d take would be a law about politically incorrect, inhumane, eastern owners + the EPL would be a mess.
    But Italy may have to change now. They’re been backed into a wall. Otherwise Serie A will become a true low-level joke or it just won’t be sustainable. And there’s too much potential money to be made for Italy’s local bureaucrat’s to hold it back forever.
    Most people on here seem to be too young to remember when Serie A was the no1 league so are skeptical. But if Italian club’s got their stadia sorted + a better infrastructure, it would easily rival the EPL. Those Italian crowds back in the day were huge.
    Italy already has the advantage of clubs been much cheaper to buy for investors + so has more room for potential growth. It has the cool nostalgia factor from the 90’s too.
    I’ll have to learn more about this law. It sounds like just another commercial law to suit those who already have plenty.
    But it may help to level the playing field a bit so that with the right backing, famous clubs like Ajax, Benfica + Anderlecht can compete in Europe again?

  12. Every premier league club would fail the new spending limits if it was 70%. Most would fail the 90%.

  13. It has already been proved that Football governing bodies, namely Fifa and also Uefa are corrupt organizations that push the agenda that they are being fed from the outside. Those outsiders as I mentioned, are reestablishing imperialistic new world order in all aspects of human civilization including Football.

  14. @mike

    Stop saying what u don’t understand Burnley and Southampton are dead club DNT compare sun and moon together

  15. Like most here. I am sad with this new ruling since it maintains the monopoly the Prem has over the rest financially. This new ruling basically relegates non-English clubs to a state of feeders for the richer English clubs. As such, the Champions League becomes irrelevant.

    As such I am also in favour of a European Continental Super League. Make it 20 clubs with 1st, 2nd,3rd divisions with promotion and relegation. The Clubs can be initially allocated their places based on their historical coefficient.

    Putting a 70% Revenue expenditure limit when the league don’t generate similar revenue is the final nail in the coffin of parity.
    At this point, the clubs that get relegated from the Prem get more money than the Serie A Champion revenue wise.

    I was initially against the ESL and Agnelli/Perez’s Proposal but we are headed toward an English monopoly in the UCL over the foreseeable future so the European Continental Super League that excludes English clubs is okay.

  16. I agree with some comments here about merging the continental leagues. However, it will be hugely controversial and will face enormous pushback from all the clubs that are not allowed in, and the politicians that represent those cities, who will be a majority in national parliaments. So the way to proceed would be to join 2 leagues, each with 10 teams. For instance, if you were to join Serie A with the Bundesliga, and La Liga with Ligue 1, they would each have the approximate revenues of the Premier League, creating 3 roughly equal European leagues. I think this would be a great balance of power.

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