There's been a few things coming out of UEFA lately, like the spending caps, 6+5 rule, etc and I didn't kno where to put them without going OT in another thread in Football Discussion. Lock if you don't feel it'll be used enough.

Anyways, something else from UEFA.


In my opinion, this will single handedly destroy the competition in football, it's sickening to read, at least when applied to the EPL anyway.

The way I see it is this. Being in the top 4 gives you so much more money, this is what helps turn a team into a super power, consistant CL qualification. Who are the biggest threats to the CL teams? Using comon sense that would be the teams in 5th and 6th, the places just outside the CL positions. With this new proposal, it pretty much guarentees that the teams in 5th and 6th have no chance of breaking the top 4. The new proposal wants teams in Europe to be capped, with the restriction in spending being based on their income. So the teams that had the best chance of breaking the top 4 are now being restricted in what they can spend, not only this, but they will be able to spend LESS than the teams in the CL as it's based on income! So this will make the gap between 4th and 5th even bigger. Generally, teams outside of Europe are 1. so far away from 4th place that they aren't a worry to the CL teams and 2. don't have the spending power to bridge the gap. It seems that finishing in a Europa League places makes you the most disadvantaged team in the league, you hardly get any revenue from the competition and then you are restricted by how much you can spend.

Thank God for Man City right now, otherwise there would be no hope of anyone breaking the top 4 in this country. Ridiculous, poorly thought out idea from Platini and the money greedy UEFA.

Are you sure this report of your has included everything in it?

For instance, I'm guessing the amount they would be allowed to spend:

Transfer fund = Total Income - Obligations (like debt payments, wages etc.)

I think this would ensure a fairly level field.

But you're right. Billionaires could technically invest x amount of money even then, since it needn't be considered a loan.

I think the plan would be fair had it been something more strict, but when you're using income it goes some teams such a big advantage over others. I think teams need to be given an eact limit on how much they can spend for that year. Something like:

CL Teams: £25m net
EL Teams: £40m net
The rest: £50m net

I'd wish for something like this, but UEFA don't have the balls to oppose Europes biggest clubs.

I also think in regard to the HG quota that will be introduced next season, they need to have requirements for the 11 onfield players, rather than just squad requirements.

I agree. 8 HG in a squad of 25 is pathetic. At least half that number ought to be HG. What's the point in it being a football club, if it isn't the least bit local.

$$$

I completely agree.

Obviously everybody feels there club does things the right way, but I really feel Villa do. We have 24 HG players according to the new rules, we have 5 or 6 in the current squad that were born in Birmingham or it's surrounding areas. We have arguably got the best academy in the country, certainly in the top 3 as we regularly do well and we regularly bring players through to the first team. We have also spent more money on English players than any other club since MON took over and have produced more England internationals than any other club in the country.

We're an English club from Birmingham and I want our squad to show that. It gives the club an identity and the fan/player interaction takes a boost as a result. We love the players and they love us. Despite only 1 being born in Birmingham, the way the lads celebrated on Sunday you'd have thought al XI were Birmingham born and bred, its fantastic.

It might mean nothing to some people and it means nothing in terms of success. But it's certainly something I'm proud of.

You SHOULD be proud of it, Kurt.

Villa are a good club built in what I think of as the right way (emphasis on local, attention to the academy, etc). You have a sane owner who doesn't mind some (but never insane crazy money) spending and who, unlike some other owners, has NO DEBT on the books. You've got a coach who's good and who's wildly entertaining to watch on the sidelines.

I think most everyone knows I don't particularly like a lot to do with the sport in England, but I do definitely appreciate and admire Villa (and it's NOT just because of the flashing antlers).

Platini has some good ideas, but many misguided ones. He's a very left wing PC-minded liberal whose ideas are wishy washy hippy-esque equality nonsense.

You'll never have parity in football - if you did, the standard would dip dramatically. Yeah, it might be more competitive, but it's hardly entertaining to watch Bognor Juniors V Averstein Rovers - they are equal though...

I agree with every word of that.

Platini is so naive. Like I said before, Man Citys owners will just sponsor Man City for *enter however much they want to spend on transfers* and it will be considered income. It'll basically help City more as their rivals won't be able to spend as much as they do now.

Idiot.

He must have looked into that. We should check the whole thing.

The guys at UEFA can't be that stupid. Even a smart 10 yo could come up with that solution. I'm sure they think of some arrangements to prevent this.

obviously they will audit and keep a close eyes on club. They probably will want a statement proving how much they earn and where the money comes from etc and i'm sure they will rule out such donations that the owners could provide.


However, I wonder whats going to happen to clubs with big debt? Do they get penalised and have to pay it off first before spending or what?

I think I've read that it depends on the kind of debt they have. Capital debt (ie, owing money to the banks because they're building new stadiums) won't count. Debt for buying expensive players (like the 100+ million Real owe to Spanish banks) will.

Perhaps, this would level the playing field from here on. Restrictions on the extravagant spends; like taking a mid to bottom table team and soaking it with unlimited funds to make it a contender in no less than two years is not what football is all about.

Manchester C is exactly the reason why clubs have raised the issue to UEFA. But I do not think that those clubs that raised the issue to UEFA will benefit from it more than those that do not make it to the top four kurtsimonw, logically those clubs competing for a top four finish would have higher wages to deal with, than say a mid to bottom table team. So it would all be in proportion I guess.

Discrediting UEFA, if I may, does blur the idea further. And makes it look like a controversy is being cooked to benefit the likes of Man U and us.

ps On the issue of club presidents putting their own money into their clubs, isn't that why UEFA came up with this solution in the first place?

It wouldn't matter. Citys owners could change their shirt sponsor to the logo of one of their other business and pay them however much they wanted per year on the shirt sponsor deal. There's nothing wrong with that and you can't stop it, it's no different than any other sponsor, except for the amount of money. To stop it you'd need to stop shirt sponsors.

If they're using one of their own companies, then those respective companies cannot afford to put in a lot of money. That money has to be shown to have come from the company's account. And the more money they put into Man City, they have to either show a corresponding return in business terms or have a higher bottom line profit.

On that other hand, the owner doesn't need to account to anyone. Like Abramovich, when he ploughed in 600 MM.

I agree with your first comment, but surely for Man Citys owners to have such huge amounts of money, one of their companies would have to be earning huge amounts of money? Then they'd just use this to sponsor the Man City shirt instead of just using it as direct transfer funds.

Well when you rule a country, the state's wealth is your wealth.

Oh, I just presumed they were in oil or something.

Nope. They're the ruling family of Abu Dhabi. Sheikh in their titles remember? That's the equivalent of saying 'His Highness'.

if only italy's leader was as supportive

So, Swiss referee Massimo Bussaca is generally thought of as one of the better refs in Europe. But he's got a naughty streak.

First, over the weekend, he gave a one-fingered salute to fans during a Swiss league game. link

And then secondly, while refereeing a game in Qatar, he relieved himself on the pitch while the players were positioning themselves for a corner. link

Fishdoll tsk tsk, such bad manners!

FAIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I know you try to be as fair as possible, Jack, but sometimes your homerism comes to the front.


Carlo won 1 league title in 9 years at Juve/Milan, I've yet to see him really accomplish anything outstanding. Winning the CL is fine, it is a good achievment, but with the squads/players he's had? He's won 3 major titles with these clubs, 1 competition every 3 years. I have to say that's a prety awful record. Carlo may not have directly spent any money, but Inzaghi, Sheva, Nesta, Rui Costa, etc. were players at his disposal and they weren't exactly free.


I disagree strongly with this. Did Jose spend money? No doubt, and lots of it. But in relation to the money spend and the time they spent it, Sacchi certainly spent more. Didn't Sacchi break the World transfer record once or twice with his signings? The Milan of the late 80s/early 90s was probably the first Galactico's era in modern football! Jose didn't break World records, in fact, I don't think he broke the British record. Sheva may have come close, but then I'd even say that weren't his signing.

I think too much emphasis and spotlight is put on his time at Chelsea. It's the same with MON at Villa, we have a section of support that doesn't like him and say he'd only done well at Celtic because it was a 2 horse race, but he had ridiculous success at Wycombe and Leicester, just like Jose had at Porto.

Jose didn't leave because he wasn't doing well, hell, they didn't win the league the season before he left either. I think he was sick of being undermined by the owner.

I don't get this part.

I can argue that Mourinho had Cole, Terry, Lampard, Makalele at his disposal too. Maybe not CL material, but definitely good enough to win the league, which Mourinho did after spending some more.

And the transfer record has really no basis.

So suppose Milan paid 94 million euros to buy Ronaldo, they've broken the world transfer record

And Real Madrid did all the purchases they did this season except perhaps instead of CR9 they buy Robinho for 20 million (coz Man City found out Robinho is gay and sold him for a discount).

Do you know what the record fee Sacchi spent was ? 6 million for Ruud Guulit. Even adjusted for inflation I doubt it would cross 25 million euros.

You can argue Capello and Lentini but Lentini's price of 13 million, would be around 40 million today. A large sum but not inordinate.

Here's the breakdown.:

WENGER:
(Year - Expense/Income)


2004/05 - £1,000,000 / £2,600,000
2005/06 - £32,350,000 / £13,700,000
2006/07 - £11,900,000 / £27,600,000
2007/08 - £13,200,000 / £9,500,000

SAF:

2004/05 - £20,000,000 / £3,850,000
2005/06 - £17,500,000 / £6,500,000
2006/07 - £35,600,000 / £15,200,000


Benitez:

2004/05 - £25,550,000 / £10,500,000
2005/06 - £36,900,000 / £9,500,000
2006/07 - £44,800,000 / £13,630,000
2007/08 - £22,500,000 / £19,900,000

MoN:

2006/07 - £24,650,000 / £3,050,000
2007/08 - £8,750,000 / £10,000,000
(He spent 44 MM the next season)

Mourinho:
2004/05 - £56,850,000 / £12,700,000
2005/06 - £92,400,000 / £20,800,000
2006/07 - £7,000,000 / £15,800,000
2007/08 - £13,500,000 / £6,000,000



I'll break it down even further. This is from an old Times article:

Manchester United’s total spending since the 2004-05 season : £116.1m

2007-08: £55 million

2006-07: £18.6m

2005-06: £17.5m

2004-05: £25m

Won: Premiership 1, Carling Cup 1



Chelsea’s total spending : £213.7m

2007-08: £0

2006-07: £66.3m

2005-06: £56.4m

2004-05: £91m

Won: Premiership 2, FA Cup 1, Carling Cup 2

There's a difference though. Inzaghi, Sheva, Nesta and Rui probably cost up near £75m for the 4. Terry was a youth player, Lampard cost £10m, Cole cost £10m and Makelele was a bit more expensive, but it still doesn't compare to £70m-odd.


Prices in football aren't relative to inflation, you know that. The top end is the top end, regardless. Breaking the World record for £1m in 1960 is no different that breaking the World reocrd for £6m in 1990, it's just what the top footballers cost. I will agree that there are some exceptions, like what Madrid did this year, that kind of spending goes way and above the norm and I highly doubt you'll see many transfers surpass the Zidane/Figo prices like that agin.



I'm not intending to be awkward, I'm just having a little trouble understand some of these figures.

There's no way in hell Villa spent near £25m in MONs first season, no way. He joined the club very very late and only signed Petrov and Maloney on fees, the rest were free transfers. The combined fees for the 2 were only around £8m. We then signed Carew in swap with Baros and Young for £9.5m, so that works out to around £17m or so.

Onto Chelsea. In the Jose breakdown, you have him spending £92m and selling £20m worth, which would come to £72, yet on your 'further breakdown', the total spending for that year is £56m, how does that work out, or am I mising something?

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Overall, I do understand and agree with your point, I'm not suggesting Jose hasn't been given tonnes of money. But re-read my next to last paragraph on my previous post and you'll see what I mean. Everyone knows Jose won alot at Chelsea, but we know he was given the funds to do so too. I will add that on a spend-per-year basis, Ranieri spent more and won nothing, while Jose won an average of 2 trophies per season, so it shows it wasn't only the money, otherwise Ranieri would have won at least something. But I go back to his time at Porto, I doubt we'll see a CLass B team winning the European Cup anytime soon, UEFA thought they'd stopped that happening when they introduced the Champions League, but you can't stop Jose.

I agree with Kurt on the money issue, it does not guarantee success. I think Mourinho did an amazing job at Chelsea. His CL victory with Porto though is in my view the fluke of the century. La Coruna's and Monaco's achievements that season were bigger. (edit: I mean harder to achieve and more important but in the end it's of course the title that matters)

You know I don't agree. I know Deportivo and Monaco beat some good team, but it's not like Jose had it easy. They did beat United, ironically they knocked out both Deportivo and Monaco too. I did feel sorry for Monaco that year though, after beating Chelsea and Madrid in the past 2 rounds, I thought it was going to be 'easy' for them in the Final.

what do you think of this guys, does madrid have the rights to stop him from going to the national team?

I think it's tacky. That said, if a Portugal NT doctor does go to Madrid and examines him and says he's fit to go and he still doesn't go, he'll face sanctions (ie, a ban). Madrid don't want to risk him getting hurt - and a player being too hurt to play for his NT isn't exactly uncommon among other teams (MU for example). Thing is, I don't think the Portuguese FA and their coach are willing to really play hardball. My guess is they'll back down (and I would be unsurprised if they were to get a nice cash gift from Florentino Perez for doing so).

Course, the joke'll be on them if they do this and Portugal don't qualify for the World Cup -- in which case they'll probably lose an awful lot on Cristiano Ronaldo jersey sales.

I've always wondered, how will anyone know if he's injured? I have absoloutely zero knowledge on the medical system, do they have technology which can find muscle tear or bone damage now or similar? Otherwise what if the Portuguese FA just give him a medical and say he's fine, just so he can play?

MRIs can show muscle tears, Kurt.

OH MY GOD! It hurts when I look at it!

oh my lord...will he ever talk the same again lol

Ouch!!

It must be worse than breaking your leg... (EDIT: I just said a stupid thing, didn't I?)





(How do you how it hurts btw? does that mean you just solved the mystery of your sex? )

good work inspector ZED!!!

If you have muscle tear you would know it. If you don't, then you must be paralyzed.

I know that, I'm not an idiot. But that's not what I asked. What if Madrid pay Ronaldo to say he's injured so he doesn't go and play with Portugal? Then do Portugal just have to take his word for it, even if he is actually 100% fine? That's why I wanted to know if there was a way to find out.

I disagree.

All the time or some of the time? Either way... +1.

Is it me, or are a lot of people PMSing on here lately?

No, it's just you.

You can't blame me, you practically walked right into that one.

Not a big enough name and not playing in a big enough team for people to care but another player has suffered a life-ending heart-attack...

here

what the **** is going on!?!? why does this keep on happening and why doesn't anybody do anything?????

What do you mean?... it's always sad/shocking to hear such news.

RIP.

A heart attack at 31? That's just insane. Is this a common problem among Latino men? I mean, Antonio Puerta wasn't even thirty when he died.

Exactly what I wanted to say. apparently de la Red has a similar problem...

I agree, somebody should do something. It's crazy that nobody can stop people dying yet, WTF are medical scientists doing exactly!?

On a serious note, very sad news. This shouldn't be happening.