RMC Sport report that UEFA have decided to make three key changes to Financial Fair Play owing to the COVID-19 climate.
UEFA President Aleksandr Ceferin stated in a meeting at the beginning of March: “Financial Fair Play has been successful as a system but will likely have to adapt to a different time. This development will not occur in the very near future.”
In any case, things have accelerated in recent weeks. UEFA don’t intend to enact a total reform, nor to make changes that question the very basis of FFP, but they intend to lessen the strictness of the regulations over the next 6 months.
Concretely, the members of the instruction chamber of the Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) are now poised to look at club accounts no longer over a 12 month period but over a 24 month period.
Similarly, the limit of €30m of authorised deficit will be widened to €60m over 24 months. Finally, the hearings generally scheduled for autumn over possible measures or sanctions applicable the following season are now poised not to take place in 2020. The next in-depth studies of the accounts could therefore be held in the autumn of 2021 and would span the previous two seasons (24 months).
Clubs that would therefore have one good accounting year out of two, could thus avoid potential FFP sanctions.
It remains to be seen how this relaxation of regulations will apply to teams who were already under investigation before COVID-19, such as Ligue 1 side Marseille.
