Gifting Man City's FFP Fine to Champions League Rivals is Absurd UEFA Decision

UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) initiative was initially seen by many as an attempt to curb overspending, protecting those clubs vulnerable to a Leeds United situation where over-exuberant expenditure by owners with good intentions but bad management skills place their team in financial turmoil. UEFA president Michel Platini was cast as the benevolent inventor of an idea that would save football from financial ruin. FFP, they said, would provide a level playing field.

However, it’s becoming more and more clear as FFP progresses that it is, in fact, nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with further consolidating the stranglehold on success a handful of European sides have had for years.

FFP limits the level of investment an owner can make in their football club, meaning a group of elite clubs who have perennially qualified for the Champions League and benefited from the eye-watering sums of prize money on offer in that competition, who, as a result, have become so far ahead of the chasing pack it’s almost unfathomable, are now uncatchable.

Football, it’s widely recognised, is a business, yet investment is now limited. In no other sector would investment in a business be discouraged, let alone outlawed, and yet football is doing exactly that. As long as the investment isn’t borrowed and isn’t levied on unrealistic expectations of success, there seems little risk or problem.

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Despite calls from a minority that FFP would be harmful, the insistence from most was that this was a good move, and UEFA and the group of lobbying G14 clubs won the argument.

Yet now the absurdity levels have been cranked up even further with the news that Manchester City’s £50 million fine for failing to comply with the break-even rules last season (which will be dropped to £20 million if they comply in the coming years) will be redistributed among the other Champions League sides, according to the Press Association (via The Guardian).

As Alex Timperley says on City fan site Typical City, it amounts to “nothing more than common robbery.” 

So not only have City been fined for what UEFA see as overspending, that fine is now being handed to their rivals. City can quite rightly feel hard done by.

Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, the European Clubs’ Association chairman, said: “It was an agreement between UEFA and the clubs that it was money belonging to the clubs.”

And in his speech to the ECA, Platini added that clubs will have an opportunity to discuss FFP in its current guise and suggest changes:

"

The framework for financial fair play must be dynamic, it must evolve constantly, which is why I have convened an important round table on the subject with your representatives at UEFA headquarters on 13 October.

We will see whether any imperfections can be ironed out and whether there is room to further improve the system.

"

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We all wait with baited breathe for the future improvements.

Even if City’s owners were to return home tomorrow and end their association with the club, they would leave them in a far healthier position than when they arrived: debt free and with a huge increase in revenue, via Ian Herbert writing in the Independent. Compare that with the Glazers' ownership of Manchester United, which is based on using the club’s profits to service debts created by purchasing the club, and it’s clear which owners are better for their football club and the football world at large.

Yet, by FFP’s standards, United’s owners sail through FFP and even stand to inherit some of City’s fine.

The thing is, for City, FFP isn’t a major problem. Their investment came at just the right time. They’ve broken into the elite group of European clubs whose grip on success and the financial benefits that success brings is firm. Revenue is increasing dramatically, they are expanding their stadium and infrastructure, have an outstanding squad and have a model for continued success.

They will take their medicine now and then flourish. Their future is bright, despite UEFA’s best attempts at spoiling the party.

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It’s underachieving clubs who once dreamed of catching up with the successful elite and enjoying some success who can feel really stitched up by FFP. How on earth are the likes of Aston Villa, Leeds United or Everton—all great clubs with successful pasts and wonderful tradition—ever supposed to catch the Citys, Uniteds and Bayern Munichs of this world without the option of investment?

The established European sides had become so entrenched in the Champions League, and so financially dominant, that City had to blow the doors down and commit huge sums of money to reconcile the gap. Other clubs can no longer dream of being able to do that. It’s a closed shop and that, it seems, is exactly what UEFA want.

Rob Pollard is Bleacher Report's lead Manchester City correspondent and will be following the club from a Manchester base throughout the 2014-15 season. Follow him on Twitter here: @RobPollard_