Guess Who Benefits From Relaxed Financial Fair Play Rules

Financial Fair Play is a misnomer, or at least only technically accurate. The regulations UEFA started enforcing in 2013 are meant to support solvency, not parity. There's no field-leveling in its mission, nor has increased equality been a side effect. European soccer remains as unfair and uneven as it has ever been. There are haves, have-nots, and have-everythings, and that's the way things will remain for the foreseeable future. FFP doesn't help Celta compete with Real Madrid, or give Hoffenheim any more of a prayer of finishing ahead of Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga. It's there to keep all four clubs from racking up debts they can't pay. It sort of accomplishes that, provided you look at it the way UEFA would prefer.

When FFP was introduced in 2009, UEFA president Michel Platini claimed 50 percent of the clubs in Europe were operating in the red, and declared the established system of clubs spending whatever they wanted and then borrowing money from banks and investors to cover their deficits to be unsustainable. FFP was devised to save clubs from themselves, to make sure signing an expensive striker didn't financially imperil the whole institution. Some commonsense safeguards against overspending were put into place. The details of the legislation are byzantine and convoluted, as such things tend to be, but the basic principle is this: clubs must balance their budgets. They have to send out roughly what they take in, or else face sanctions such as roster restrictions, fines, or, in extreme cases, bans from the Champions and Europa Leagues.

The problem with this right-minded solution, if you want to call it a problem, is that a handful of clubs have owners who are happy to put their own money into the coffers even if they know they're not going to see a return on their investment; shockingly, it turns out some obscenely rich dudes are unhealthily competitive egomaniacs who just want to see their team win, whatever the cost.

Italy's twin colossi, Milan and Inter, used to be like this. Before FFP, Massimo Moratti (who sold his majority stake in Inter in 2013) and Silvio Berlusconi would give their talent acquisition staff free rein to sign whoever they wanted each summer and then foot the bill, whatever it was, when it rolled in. Nowadays, both clubs are foundering because the San Siro isn't a cash cow; their sponsorships deals are rich, but not among the best in the world; and Italy's TV deal isn't nearly as lucrative as England's, or as favorable toward Milan and Inter as Spain's is toward Real Madrid and Barcelona. Under FFP, their revenues aren't high enough to compete with Europe's upper echelon. FFP essentially forbids what has lamentably been called The Sugar Daddy model.

The loudest agitation against FFP has not come from Italy, though. Supporters groups from two of Europe's nouveau riche clubs—Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City—have joined a lawsuit that asserts FFP violates European Union law in the sense that UEFA's regulations disrupt the free market. This is undeniably true, but the question of whether FFP is legal is much thornier than that.

PSG and City are both working on—ugh, this fucking term again, sorry—The Sugar Daddy model. They have wealthy Qatari owners for whom the clubs are proxies and status symbols, not money-making concerns; the owners flatly do not care about anything besides winning and acquiring elite players. These are the sort of people who could purchase many ocean liners at sticker price and not be anywhere close to broke. There's an argument—a whiny and entitled and mostly valid one—to be made that they should be allowed to splurge however they see fit. Even if that means we must reckon with a system that brooks something as stupidly extravagant as a €70 million swoop for David Luiz.

Predictably, Michel Platini has announced UEFA will be "relaxing" FFP this summer. As ever, we're left to suss out what that might mean. Sportocrats are not given to directness, else every other sentence out of their froggy mouths would be we did this because power and/or money were at stake. It would behoove UEFA not to piss off PSG or Man City, or to perturb any of the Russian precious metal barons or Saudi royals who might want to buy 80 percent of Stoke City or Villarreal and pump money into the club such that they become the next Chelsea. It's in UEFA's interest not to discourage left-field silly cash from entering the sport, since that means better salaries for top players, more silverware for top clubs, and pats on the head for Platini, who would like to be FIFA president soon and will need all the powerful friends he can get.

If all of this sounds like chummy reinforcement of the status quo, it's because that's what it is. Or that's most likely what it is. We'll have to wait and see. But we almost definitely won't be surprised. The odds of a more flexible FFP benefitting even Europe's upper middle class of clubs, let alone its working class, are as thin as Platini's veneer of integrity. What's coming down from on high will help the rich and powerful, as it generally does. That's the most logical outcome, and unfortunately it's just this sort of grim, brutal pragmatism that rules European soccer.