UEFA relaxes financial fair play rules amid coronavirus crisis

0 Comment(s)Print E-mail Xinhua, June 19, 2020
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UEFA has decided on Thursday to adopt some "emergency measures" easing the financial fair play (FFP) rules to help the clubs through the current economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

As European football industry is losing millions of euros in income since the outbreak of the pandemic in the beginning of this year, many clubs are undergoing short of liquidity or even facing bankruptcy risk.

The original FFP program required that clubs competing in European competitions are not allowed for a deficit of more than 30 million euros in a three-year period.

However, given the current crisis caused by the pandemic, UEFA has made a change that combining the financial year 2020 and 2021 into one which will be assessed next year under the FFP program, aiming to "addressing the actual problem which is revenue shortfall due to COVID-19 and not financial mismanagement."

"The assessment of financial year is postponed for one season, and will be assessed together with the financial year 2021," the governing body of European football said in a statement.

"The adverse impact of the pandemic is neutralized by averaging the combined deficit of 2020 and 2021 and by further allowing specific COVID-19 adjustments."

Other measures including a change of the monitoring period of the next two seasons, as the 2020/21 monitoring period is curtailed and only covers two financial years (2018 and 2019), whereas the 2021/22 monitoring period is extended and covers four financial years (2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021).

However, all the measures will not affect the decisions taken before the crisis. For example, Manchester city has been banned from continental competitions for two years and fined 30 million euros for breaching the FFP rules between 2012 and 2016. The Premier League club has appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland, which will announce the judgement in July.

Meanwhile, UEFA has approved the deadline for player registration for the group stage of the 2020-21 UEFA club competitions to be set on October 6.

As a result, the UEFA executive committee called on all member associations to adopt a "harmonized end date" of the summer transfer window which is October 5.

On Wednesday, UEFA confirmed that this season's Champions League would be completed with a "final eight" one-leg knock-out format in Lisbon from August 12 to 23. The Europa League will come back in similar format at German venues from August 10 to August 21. 

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