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David Taylor, General Secretary of UEFA discusses Regulation in European Football

8:00am Friday, 29th May 2009

With the culmination of the UEFA Champions League on Wednesday night, it is a fitting time to look back on the presentation made by David Taylor, the General Secretary of UEFA, at Leaders in Football last October. Taylor, formerly the CEO and Secretary of the Scottish Football Association, gave a presentation focused on finding the right frameworks of regulation and self-regulation in European football. While many specific issues involving Europe's governing body have had concrete changes and developments since then, Taylor's broad presentation remains as pertinent now as it was eight months ago and illuminates many of the developments in issues, such as the proposed 6+5 rule, that remain at the forefront of discussion about football's governance.

Taylor began with a brief history of the hierarchy of governing bodies in the game and UEFA's place in that hierarchy. He explained the basic structure of UEFA (it has a congress, president and executive committee as well as disciplinary bodies kept free from political influence) and how UEFA sees its purpose: 'The vision and mission that we have is quite basic, quite simple, not dramatic, maybe not inspiring, but it's essential in the sense that what we are aiming to do within Europe is have a united football family working together to improve enjoyment of our game. We do not see people within football off the pitch as competitors. We work with people within the game. We are not naïve enough to think we'll always agree, far from it, but we're in football together. We're part of this football family. If you want to look for competitors look at rugby, look at other sports, look at other forms of entertainment. There's no point in trying to look for competitors within the game.'

Taylor then discussed the four main areas of concentration for UEFA (promoting football, establishing frameworks of cooperation, optimising revenue and dealing with management and management controls) and the club licensing system in Europe that UEFA started in 2004: 'We started to use this system to define the minimum criteria to enter UEFA club competitions, and we now have a European wide system, which in most countries has been adopted by the national football associations, to help regulate the activities of their clubs. It is a modern form of football regulation. I know that from my own experience in Scotland, I was an enthusiastic supporter of bringing this into the game. Before we had a much looser arrangement and I think that provided there is the cooperation and support of all stakeholders, that self-regulation needs to be updated and brought into present day.'

The overall objectives of the club licensing system are to support good governance, to improve the overall running of clubs and to promote the transparent and efficient functioning of national associations. The system is based on the principle of subsidiarity. 'I think this is an important principal within football, not always respected. If we do have a pyramid system of regulation...what is the most appropriate level at which self-regulation should take place? What we have decided to do is to base this on the national football associations so we basically manage a decentralised and delegated system from UEFA. That means that we do spot-checks, we do compliance audits and we take disciplinary action in case of any breach of regulations, against national associations. But our primary role of course is to assist them in the implementation of these regulations and in a more positive way to ensure that information is available to all in terms of the benchmark in process. At the end of the day, we have to manage the system on a decentralised basis. And consultation and involvement is important. UEFA is not and should not be seen as imposing systems,' Taylor explained.

Taylor contends that the system has so far improved the education of youth players, improved the medical care of players, improved the clubs' commitment to youth and junior football, increased the number of national associations who have achieved the UEFA pro coaching level, improved stadia and caused a specific decrease in the number of financial disputes between clubs, players and coaches while improving the basic financial running of clubs. Through October 2008 over 600 clubs had been licensed since 2004 with 20 percent of applicants having been refused. 'We have refused the entry of clubs such as CSKA Sofia, the Bulgarian champions who qualified on sporting merit to enter the UEFA Champions League this year, but because they were not awarded a license because of some financial issues in the club they were not entitled to participate in the Champions League ... We will not flinch if we have to exclude clubs on the basis of not obtaining a license,' Taylor said.

After explaining the specifics of the club licensing system, Taylor then looked to the future and at the role of political bodies in the governance of football. 'When we look forward and think about the governance of European football, and we think about self-regulation, off-field regulation, the question is how far can football authorities go? Is football just like any other business? Of course we could spend hours debating this topic; my very simple answer is no it's not. It's a sport and we must defend the values of the sport and in order to do so, we need a better definition of the legal environment to address some of the specific sports rules within football. And sports rules are not just rules about what happens on the pitch but what happens in terms of regulation of the game, provided that it is reasonable, provided that it has the involvement of stakeholders, then we should have greater legal protection than is evident at the moment. And we get some encouraging noises and support from politicians but we need that to be translated into real political decisions, indeed legal decisions, which will give us greater stability for our game going forward.'

Asked in the Q &A that followed his presentation if he was advocating a role for the government in football, Taylor expanded on what was needed from European and national governments where the governance of football is concerned: 'I'm saying that we have had some various shocks to our football regulation system delivered by the European Court of Justice from time to time and these shocks are not something that we particularly welcome. We'd much rather have greater legal certainty for the sports regulatory bodies to operate within the framework of European law. Now some of the fundamental freedoms which are associated with the Treaty of Rome and the European Union, we cannot run against them... but within areas which can be more clearly defined, the most obvious is the rules of the game, we cannot have these matters contested before the courts, it's up to sports authorities to regulate these matters. But then you go beyond that to say 'what about people owning more than one club in the same competition?' I mean if we apply the rules of business to the rules our sport in a way that is totally free-market, then we change our sport completely. Therefore we need greater legal certainty, support from our politicians in order that the sports authorities can regulate the game directly ourselves.'

Taylor explained UEFA wants less involvement from the EU so that it can self-regulate more, and demonstrate that it is a responsible act of government to leave sport to regulate itself. UEFA simply seeks greater legal clarity around which areas sports bodies do and do not have the freedom to work.

Being free to self-regulate with the support of politicians, but without their direct interference, requires a balanced approach from football administrators. They must keep focus on the foremost goal of greater legal certainty to govern the game from within, even when the stance of those seeking to dictate the game from outside matches their own. David Taylor's presentation at last year's Leaders in Football conference made sense of the complex position from which UEFA governs European football, and much of what he said then sheds light on what has happened since, and what will happen in the future.

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