City & FFP | 2020/21 Accounts released | Revenues of £569.8m, £2.4m profit (p 2395)

[BluessinceHydeRoad]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

Has this been posted? It's from Fair Play for Football Consumers FB page

Interesting article in the Times by Marcotti, albeit not one that will find favour here. He reckons Dupont will fail because of two fundamental differences with the Bosman case. Firstly because FFP legislation is fairly recent and enjoys the support of UEFA, the EC and the major clubs, most of whom are still in power. Whereas with Bosman they were dealing with antiquated legislation that people took for granted but weren't personally invested in.

Secondly he thinks that Dupont was on the right side of the argument with Bosman but not FFP. He paints City and PSG as being in a minority in an argument about the rights of stakeholders.


I wouldnt say its the most robustly argued case I've ever read, I'm sure that many will find the holes in his arguments. But its interesting to see how others see the issue. Know your enemy as they say.

Interested in reading it if anyone can c&p it from behind the paywall.

It would be very interesting to read Marcotti's article for a number of reasons. In the first place he's not a lawyer. Secondly the age of the "legislation" is irrelevant. Dupont's claim is not that some "antiquated legislation" is in conflict with some carefully thought out answer to football's problems or that the contrary is the case. His contention is that a fundamental, founding principle of the European Treaty is being nullified, (not by legislation of a sovereign power) by a sporting body through a series of regulations with its starting point that a principle of commercial law must not be allowed to apply. That's more akin to contempt than to a legal principle. Support from UEFA and the clubs is of little importance since the ECJ stated, in the Bosman case, that sporting cases are to be decided on the basis of what the law is and NOT what the needs of the sport (let alone SOME clubs) are perceived to be. The law exists, amongst other things, to protect the rights it confers on everyone, be they in the minority or not. How many Islamic preachers and those accused of terrorism have been protected by the courts against the will of the majority? Cityand PSG may be in the minority (though UEFA appears not to have established this according to any objective criteria, but they may well be in the right. Neither club is, though, involved in the case. It is their supporters and players' agents who have brought the case.

 

[fbloke]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

Gab Macotti is always willing to chat about such things with people on Twitter and I have had lively conversations on a couple of occasions about FFP.

The problem I had with his opinions previously (i cant say it is in this case because I havent read it) is that they were base on innacurate and incomplete information. That also seems to be the case for most FFP reporting in the media.

 

[jrb]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

TBH I wouldn't take a blind bit of notice of what he thinks.

Given the choice I'd rather listen to Dupont.

Do you think for one minute he would pursue this, if he didn't think he had a good chance of winning?

 

[Roy Munson]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

I don't like it up here can someone put me back in my stable FFS........lol

Managed to get a nice bit of info over the weekend. City, the campus and all of the CFG are in the process of consolidating all of the I.C.T. syatems (a massive undertaking given the dozens of different systems used across CFG). This will form part of a pretty big sponsorship agreement with the software company involved. I won't specifically name the company except to say they are a German giant.

How would the ICT software company then get exposure? Because surely they want exposure as part of big sponsorship?

As I understand it, they will become an official ICT partner (in a similar way to Hayes being an official recruitment partner). I expect their logo will have a lot of visibility in CFG related websites as well as around the Campus and the various CFG stadiums.

 

[moomba]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

Would have thought if something was contrary to the law it is contrary to the law whether it was created 100 years ago or one day ago.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

Would have thought if something was contrary to the law it is contrary to the law whether it was created 100 years ago or one day ago.

Exactly. What a preposterous thing to assert.

 

[Pablo ZZZ Peroni]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

Here is the Marcotti article:

Some 20 years ago, a fresh-faced Belgian lawyer named Jean-Louis Dupont took on the establishment and changed the course of football history. We remember him for the Bosman case, which ultimately granted players free agency and eliminated limits on the number of European Union players a club could field or sign. It is hard to overstate the impact of the Bosman ruling, whether it is in terms of globalising the game, increasing the gap between the top leagues and the rest of the Continent or giving footballers more of a say in their professional lives.

Bosman gave Dupont superhero status in some quarters and he was enlisted a while back in the legal battle to challenge Financial Fair Play.

A Belgian court is considering the appeal against Uefa and the Belgian FA on the grounds that FFP, by limiting investment, is violating European competition law and that whatever exemptions Uefa may call upon do not apply. He has been joined in the lawsuit by a range of plaintiffs, including agents and the 15,000-strong Manchester City Supporters Club, an organisation representing City fans from 168 nations.

The goal is to have the issue referred to the European Court of Justice, which has the power to strike down FFP. Obviously these legal battles move only slightly faster than molten lava, which is why Dupont asked the court on Friday for a provisional measure that would effectively suspend the further implementation of FFP. Effectively, it would leave the break-even requirements at present levels (£37 million over two years) rather than tightening them over time to £22 million over three years, which is FFP’s goal.

The concept is sound. He is telling the courts: “You don’t know if FFP is legal because you haven’t explored the issue further. We don’t believe it is, we understand it will take you some time to decide the matter, but, in the meantime, please suspend the process.”

Dupont’s supporters are not concerned by the fact that many see him fighting a losing battle. After all, no one gave Jean-Marc Bosman a chance either. Yet Dupont fought his corner, persevered and made history. This will be no different, they say. But, in fact, whatever your thoughts on FFP, this is very different.

For a start, the legislation that Bosman struck down was longstanding and antiquated. FFP, on the other hand, is new. And that matters, because the actors who put FFP into place — not just Uefa, but also the majority of European clubs and the European Commission that gave it the green light — are still in power. That means they are more invested in it than the powers-that-be back in the mid-1990s, who inherited regulations limiting player movement and sort of took it for granted.
Just as important, though, is the issue of whether Dupont is on the right side of history. And here you get the sense that the momentum is on the other side with a realpolitik argument based on stakeholders.

In 1995, it was football clubs, many of them with wealthy profiteering owners and enjoying the benefits of protectionism and state subsidies, both naked and veiled, versus players, most of whom earned a fraction of what they do now. Today, it is the vast majority of clubs and the game’s governing bodies versus fans of Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain and some agents.

It is not that they do not have a valid argument, but given that City themselves say that they are very close to breaking even, you wonder how they will feel about FFP once they join the ranks of the profitable clubs. Equally, there is a just as valid counterargument to be made. You can argue that it restricts investment in the form of PSG and City and you would be correct, but there are also plenty of owners who would not be investing in football were it not for FFP and the fact is that it reduces costs and makes profitability more viable.

That is why it is hard to see how Dupont can win this time. It may have been different if he could find a way to argue that FFP restricts workers (footballers) and their ability to make a living. But with the plaintiffs he represents, there is much less of an appetite for the kind of laissez-faire argument he is pushing.

 

[Vienna_70]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

I only read the last paragraph.

In it, Marcotti claims that its hard to argue that FFPR restricts a player's ability to work and make a living.

Well, it restricted Álvaro Negredo's ability to work and make a living at City when he was left out of our Champions' League squad.

 

[FanchesterCity]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

Would have thought if something was contrary to the law it is contrary to the law whether it was created 100 years ago or one day ago.

But whose laws,?which law/s? and in what ways?

There's a reason we need legal teams - to argue about the interpretation of laws. Not much is black and white anymore.

 

[cibaman]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

I only read the last paragraph.

In it, Marcotti claims that its hard to argue that FFPR restricts a player's ability to work and make a living.

Well, it restricted Álvaro Negredo's ability to work and make a living at City when he was left out of our Champions' League squad.

Isn't the argument that Alvaro's right to make a living doesn't absolutely trump all other stakeholders rights? That if Alvaro can "only" earn say £4m pa instead of the £5m pa that he might earn in the absence of FFP, that doesn't in itself make FFP illegal?