Soulboy said:
Oh, and if he's been banging on about this for a decade, how come it only comes into effect when we join the party?
What was stopping him implementing it years ago?
Ah, because the other clubs you mention now realise that their gravy train is hitting the buffers!
Because it takes time:
1. He wasn't even UEFA president when he first started arguing for better financial governance.
2. He's had to persuade clubs to agree to this (and inevitably there has been compromise because of this).
3. He's had to persuade the EU to agree that it doesn't break any of their competition laws.
4. As we all know, there are plenty of people desperate to find loopholes, so it's been a complex process preparing/introducing it.
5. It's been introduced slowly and with plenty of warning to give clubs the best chance to comply.
The UEFA FFP isn't a wonderful rule - it's been watered down from the original plans to tackle debt as well as overspending. Platini has also argued for salary caps (both absolute and as a % of income) and other similar measures, but can't get enough agreement to implement then.
A few pages back on this thread I posted a link to a United forum from 2008. It was almost exactly like this one - full of people accusing him of targeting United, and ignoring Barca and Madrid.
Are you suggesting he spent years talking about teams with debts, salary caps, financial mismanagment, and called Utd, Chelsea, Barca and Madrid cheats for no reason - then when we were taken over said "I must do something...but how...oh yes, all that talk over the years...I'll pretend I really meant it, and I can use it to screw Man City. Just as well the people at UEFA are already working on it. I had told them to get started as they looked bored, but never intended using it against my beautiful United (oh...how it hurt me to call them 'cheats' in public)...but now all that work, all those speeches, those hours of interviews, all the work that money we've spent working on consultation and legal issues won't be wasted. We have a target, and I can pretend it was a real plan all along....Evil Man City, you are in my sights!"