Ian 77 Redux wrote:
Why would he need to take it to court? UEFA can have whatever qualification requirements they like for their competitions. They'll clearly put some safeguards in to stop people artificially creating turnover, like your example.
Promoting financial prudence is a great idea but it's far too late unfortunately.
UEFA found in the 90's, when they had to drop their restrictions on foreign players, that they cant have whatever qualification requirements they like.
I'm not sure why some types of turnover are necessarily better or worse than others. If Club A signs a 1 year shirt sponsorship deal for £25m pa, is that necessarily better (from the a financial prudence perspective) than Club B signing a 5 year £50m pa deal with a company that is part owned by the owner's relative?
I can see that it might be undesireable if the owner is comparable to, say, some of the people that have owned Portsmouth recently, but that's a slightly different issue. That's a case of people blagging their way into owning a football club when they dont really have the resources they claim. Its different to the case where the owner genuinely has the money. I dont really see how UEFA's proposed solvency rules solves the problem of dodgy owners.
I can see the case for banning "artificial" turnover on the grounds of creating a level playing field, but not on the grounds of financial prudence.