UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin has defended the concept of Financial Fair Play and believes the system has led to an ‘immeasurable improvement of European football’s health’.
Inter are due to exit the ‘Settlement Agreement’ they signed with UEFA back in 2015 at the end of the 2018-19 season, after four years of hard work in which the club have aimed to get back in line with the financial guidelines set by Europe’s governing body.
However many supporters and onlookers have been critical of the regulations since their introduction in 2011, arguing that its main achievement has been to further increase the gap between Europe’s top clubs and those below them.
Ceferin insists that Financial Fair Play has been a success during its first seven years and believes it is now time to move the regulations into ‘the next phase’.
“The reason Financial Fair Play was brought in was the financial instability of Europe’s football clubs,” he told Corriere dello Sport in an interview on Saturday.
“Since then, Financial Fair Play regulations and UEFA’s club licence system have helped a lot of clubs to improve their financial stability by preventing them from spending more than they earned. The upshot has been an immeasurable improvement in the health of European football.
“It’s now time to make the next step and that’s why we recently made the regulations even tighter still, increasing the transparency of all clubs by obliging them to publish their financial information, including payments to agents.”
Asked about Milan’s temporary exclusion from this season’s Europa League, Ceferin added: “The system is completely independent and I think everyone must appreciate the fact that this particular case shows it works.”
