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GERRY COX: FAIR PLAY - FAIR CHANCE

5:30pm Thursday, 4th March 2010

I was in Manchester this week as the European Clubs Association met and announced the result of their negotiations with UEFA over a raft of proposals aimed at introducing some overdue financial stability to European football.

It was Michel Platini, still the supreme crowd-pleaser (to some), who started the ball rolling with his Financial Fair Play initiatives which are central to his presidency of UEFA. He proposed that any club with a turnover of higher than 50m Euros that was not breaking even by 2012 would be barred from the Champions League and Europa League.

Naturally this would include many of the biggest names in European and English football such as Chelsea, Liverpool and to some extent Manchester United. Hence the Premier League's unhappiness with Platini's plans, and the need for intervention from the ECA, which arose from the ashes of the G-14 group of top European clubs two years ago.

The ECA represents 144 clubs from all 53 member countries of UEFA, and says its aims are to work in a spirit of collaboration with UEFA and the European Union for the good of club football at its highest level.

While not everybody agrees with the full proposals outlined by Platini, there is broad consensus that something needs to be done - and urgently - if we want to avoid financial meltdown in the game. What the ECA have done, in consultation with other key stakeholders such as the Premier League, is to refine Platini's plans to a workable solution, proposals that can generally be agreed upon and put into practice.

Not surprisingly the key objectives are the same; to ensure clubs live within their means, bringing under control spending on players wages and transfers, reduce agents' fees, encouraging investment in youth and stadia rather than expensive players, and discouraging reliance on wealthy benefactors. It may sound too obvious for words, but most of these areas have got out of control over the past few years, and the situation has become critical in the most recent global crash.

It is well documented here in England how the Premier League has just experienced its first serious victim of recession, with Portsmouth going into administration. But the situation is no better if not worse in many other countries - in Spain, Portugal, Italy - right across Europe. The stakes are often higher than the incomes and we heard tales of clubs spending 150 percent of turnover on wages - clearly unsustainable and unhealthy.

As Karl-Heinz Rumenigge, the ECA's Chairman said: 'If we carried on the way we are we would have big, big problems, with some clubs losing more than 100m Euros a year. This is a good time to bring the game back to a more rational way.'

The Premier League's main concerns were that some of the biggest English clubs would not be able to comply under Platini's proposals, and the 50m Euros threshold would punish England's richer clubs disproportionately. Richard Scudamore's concerns have been assuaged by a five-year phasing-in period until 2015, and the removal of the 50m Euros threshold.

The investment of wealthy owners will still be allowed, of course, but in a controlled way, not like the massive spending of Roman Abramovich at Chelsea or Sheikh Mansour at Manchester City. Investment will be encouraged in youth development and stadia rather than high-profile players, and should take the form of equity rather than loans.

Much of the details have still to be finalised, so we were unable to hear the full extent of the agreement reached by the 92 members who met at the ECA's General Assembly in Manchester. But as Rumenigge said: 'We have managed, together with UEFA, to set measures that will shape the future of European Club football into a more responsible business and ultimately a more sustainable one.'

Gerry Cox is one of England's leading football writers and former Chairman of the Football Writers' Association. He has covered well over 1000 matches including four World Cups and four European Championships. He currently runs the Hayters Sports reporting agency and writes for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph.

ROGAN TAYLOR: IT'S THE RIGHT TIME WHEN THE TIME IS RIGHT  

This week the stories came in fast flurries, like snowfall in the Scottish Highlands. There was talk of the Premier League overseas media rights for 2010-2013 topping the billion pound mark, but suggestions that the PL may not wish to publish the true figure (which may be considerably more) for fear of the public reaction to news of such incoming wealth when the shadow of administration has already claimed one victim, and haunts other clubs in 'the world's most commercially successful League'.

Far down below, poor old Chester City (125yrs old actually) were banished from the Conference, prior to the club's certain winding up. Then the debts of that other hapless soul known as Portsmouth seemed to ratchet up on a daily basis, from around £60m to getting close to £90m, according to the media-ubiquitous, Andrew Andronikou, the appointed administrator. The tax man (HMRC) - owed £18m and rising, by the Club - has made it clear that its legal approach in the High Court will require full disclosure of what happened to all the money that a participant in the richest league in the world gets. It's almost intoxicating to realise that the fine details of a PL club's finances (and its management) will now get publicly exposed in the process.

It may well also trigger serious discussion about justifications for the co-called 'football first' rule, whereby, in administration, debts owed within the game get priority for payment. It's galling to many to see this in its starkest terms: over-paid players get protected but the poor sods who come in and fix the plumbing or decorate the club offices are left out in the cold.

There was a call for an independent football 'Regulator' too - with a revamped 'fit and proper person' test - from some MPs concerned with the financial holes and the debt burdens of clubs large and small. I've got a lot of time for Barnay Roney's suggestion in the Observer recently, that the first criteria in any 'fit and proper person' test should be that anyone who wants to buy a football club should be excluded. My only exception to that rule would be: it wouldn't apply to organised groups of fans.

Which brings us to the 'Red Knights' of Man Utd; a group of 'high wealth' individual fans of the Club, in alliance with its 40,000 member strong Supporters Trust. They've been meeting with Keith Harris who this week claimed that the money is there but, crucially, the current owners don't want to sell. He urged again that if the mass of Man Utd fans really want a change of ownership to a fans' consortium, they have the power to force the sale by refusing to turn up or buy merchandise.

So where are the Liverpool 'Red Knights', and their counterparts at Arsenal or Everton? At Liverpool, the owners are actively 'seeking investment' but everyone knows that no one is going to put in large sums without control ie ownership. In effect, the two Americans, Hicks and Gillet, are looking for buyers (unlike their compatriots at Old Trafford). If the money was on the table from a fans' consortium - with a cherry on the top - they would probably sell. If they refused, there'd be an awful lot of angry scousers. And surely, Everton boss, Bill Kenwright, would gladly let go to blue-nosed fans with the right money?

In an interview, Keith Harris said, most memorably, 'The time feels right', and he may just be right. I suspect that if just one of the 'big' clubs falls to the fans, it could spark a revolution in club ownership structure at the top end of the game in England. It might come to resemble something much more like the way a lot of top level football is owned and managed on mainland Europe; a structure actively encouraged by UEFA too.

Ironically, the very commercialisation of the game in England may prove its greatest weakness, if the fans can draw together and stop shelling out their hard-earned to bolster up owners they despise.

Dr Rogan Taylor is the Director of the Football Industry Group at the University of Liverpool. He is also a writer and broadcaster, with five football books and numerous radio and TV contributions. He has acted as a special adviser to The FA, The Premier League and Premier League Clubs.

 KEIR RADNEDGE: AGENTS CREATING A STIR IN FOOTBALL'S ALPHABET SOUP

Agents are an issue. David Gill said so this week and he should know, as chief executive of Manchester United. FIFA also says so. This is why it is rolling out its web-based Transfer Matching System which will render the discredited licensing system redundant.

Also, perhaps surprisingly, some agents think agents are an issue. The good guys are growing increasingly irritated that the bad guys are giving them all a bad name.

This week, anyone in the football industry might have caught mention of the European Football Agents Association and wondered about this latest addition to football's alphabet soup.

FIFA watches everything from its massive steel and glass environmentally-friendly super-bunker in Zurich; UEFA runs Europe's competitions and distribute the largesse; EPFL talks for the leagues; ECA represents the significant clubs; FIFpro the players... and now EFAA is claiming the right to do so for agents.

Of course, agents claim they have the sort of public reputation which drags them along at a level inhabited by estate agents and members of parliament; a sort of necessary evil in a free society.

EFAA wants to change all that, insists its Dutch leader Rob Jansen. He comes at the challenge with some pedigree as the son of a professional footballer (Karel Jansen) who was the founder of the Dutch players' union and one of the founders of FIFpro.

This is not the first attempt to launch, maintain and extend the influence and remit of such an organisation.

Agents were once restricted to enabling the occasional commercial deals which came the way of only the footballing elite. But the expansion of the international market plus the television-and-sponsorship model prompted a megabucks explosion off the pitch.

In time the top agents became well known in their own right and it suited their own image value for their heads to appear above the publicity parapet. The names are well known from the likes of Dennis Roach to Pini Zahavi.

The likes of Jon Holmes (Gary Lineker) and Tony Stephens (David Platt, Alan Shearer) extended the rule beyond 'mere' transfers and into commercial realms.

Meanwhile FIFA tried to corral the agent explosion by launching a licensing system and Roach worked from the other direction by creating the International Association of Football Agents.

Now Jansen is trying to find another route, using the pyramid system which FIFA and UEFA understand: EFAA being the sum of an increasing number of national associations of agents.

Jansen says: "It's become more and more obvious from the increasing number of conflicts between managers and players and directors and agents that the system does not function any more in the best interests of anybody."

"FIFA says that only 30 per cent of transfers are managed by agents. That the rest are done between lawyers and accountants and family members. Do they really think there are no agents standing behind them?"

"So we want to talk to the governing bodies of the game. I am hopeful they will see we are sensible people who also have the best interests of the game at heart. Actually, they may also be surprised because we want more regulations than they ever proposed. We have nothing to fear. This is a commercial business. It should be properly controlled."

Indeed.

Keir Radnedge is one of the foremost observers of international soccer. He has reported at every World Cup since 1966 and is a regular contributor to TV, radio, newspapers and magazines worldwide. He is London-based Editor of SportsFeatures.com and is chairman of the Football Commission of the International Sports Press Association (AIPS).

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