Michel Platini Set To Level The European Playing Field With New Spending Rules

Michel Platini Aims To Revolutionize The Transfer Market.

UEFA President Michel Platini has today announced that UEFA, the European football governing body, will pass a law that states that clubs cannot spend more money than they make, and that the sugar daddy owners who have become so infamous in football, cannot inject massive amounts of cash into their clubs to provide for excessive transfer market spending.

We have seen examples of what Platini is striving to prevent most recently with Chelsea and Manchester City, where billionaire owners buy a club and inject massive amoutns of cash into the club so that they can go out into the transfer market and purchase any player they choose to. We have also seen Mallorca of Spains La Liga continue to spend money to create a side that will compete for European football, just to be barred access to European competition because of their excessive debt situation. We have seen Leeds United and recently Portsmouth go through the same type of situation, where excessive amounts of money is spent on bringing players into the side, only for the side to perish into financial anarchy.

Platini spoke about the new rules and said;

For years and years we were in total anarchy but the clubs asked for the rules because they knew they could not continue. We can see already that the clubs are spending less as they look to balance their books. This is because the first time the break-even rule will kick in is in the coming year, the 20112012 season. Its very soon and this means that the strategy to say I can now go and spend hundreds of millions doesnt work because we will see it in two years at the latest. Transfers have not been as crazy as in the last few years, they are pulling up their socks and the clubs are making special efforts to comply with ! the rule s.

Platinis new rule will only allow rich owners like Chelseas Roman Abramovich and Manchester Citys Sheikh Mansour to inject a maximum of 15 million Euros which will shrink into a maximum of 10 million Euros by 2015, as a supplement to any money the club makes. The injection of a transfer kitty from rich owners can also not be a loan; a loan of that size would just create another debt situation that Platini is fighting to avoid.

I personally think this new rule will be fantastic for football. Time and again we have seen clubs come from nowhere like Manchester City and Chelsea and turn themselves into super-clubs just through the spending power of their new owners. It is the death of football. A club who can go out and offer massive wages and massive transfer fees to a club for whichever player they wish will surely come to dominate their league. Weve seen it happen with Chelsea in England and Real Madrid in Spain. With Platinis new rule, clubs will be forced to look to their youth setup for talent instead of splashing the cash on foreign prospects.

Think of it this way. Werder Bremen lost Mesut Ozil, and Stuttgart lost Sami Khedira. With these new laws in place, those two clubs may not have lost their most talented young players. Jerome Boateng may not have joined Manchester City. Angel di Maria would never have joined Real Madrid, and Javier Mascherano would not be a Barcelona player. It would just mean the strengthening of every domestic league. English clubs would be forced to blood their youth players, and rely less on their spending power.

I think it could signal an era of German dominance in European competition. German clubs already basically follow this rule. They spend very little money compared to the rest of European leagues, and instead look to their youth for new talent. If German clubs could hold onto their most promising players, then they could be dominant in European competition. If top teams in any league were stopped from spending ridiculous amounts of mone! y on the best players from some of the smaller teams, then every league in Europe would be a lot more competitive, and European competition would be a lot more competitive as a result of that. There would no longer be a two-horse race in Spain, there would no longer be a big four in England.

I think Platini is spot on with this rule. Level the playing field, its the only way forward. There were suggestions of starting European Super Leagues, because of how far ahead some clubs are from their domestic opposition. Its ridiculous. It takes away from the game as a domestic competition. Every club should have at least a slight chance of fighting for a title at the end of every season. Every club should have a slight chance of a cinderella story. As things stand now, it just cant happen. Clubs are too rich and are in so much debt that a club like Bolton or a club like Wigan will never be able to compete with a team like Chelsea or Manchester United or Manchester City; teams with a bigger budget.

Platini is in the right here. A level playing field means more competitive leagues, which means more excitement for fans of every club, not just the biggest ones.

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