Financial fair play rules need to be changed because of COVID-19, implies Andrea Traverso
UEFA’s director of research and financial stability Andrea Traverso has revealed that it is his and UEFA’s belief that the COVID-19 crisis has forced their hands into changing the FFP rules. Traverso added that the current system looks to the past but things need to change going forward.
According to reports, UEFA have been looking to improve and re-design their financial fair play (FFP) rules in light of the coronavirus pandemic and that has now been confirmed by Andrea Traverso. In a recent interview, Traverso revealed that the pandemic had affected football’s finances beyond anything what anyone could have imagined and it has forced a change from UEFA. This has come under criticism from fans and even owners of financially smaller clubs as they believe UEFA are pandering to the elite and uber-rich sides.
However, Traverso further admitted that the new rules won’t be relaxed at all as compared to the old ones but just different as the old ones looked at the past. The financial effects of the COVID-19 pandemic has seen clubs lose an unforeseen amount of money and that will affect the profit and loss for each club in a UEFA competition. It saw Traverso, UEFA’s director of research and financial stability, reveal that he believes the rules should be changed and have a stronger focus on the present.
“Covid 19 has generated a revenue crisis and had a big impact on the liquidity of clubs. This is a crisis which is very different from anything we have had to tackle before. In such a situation obviously clubs are struggling; they have difficulties in complying with their obligations. I think in general rules must always evolve. They have to adapt to the context in which clubs operate,” Traverso said, reported the Guardian
"The break-even rule, the way it works now it looks backwards: it performs an assessment of a situation in the past [looking at profit and loss over three previous seasons]. The pandemic represents such an abrupt change that looking to the past is becoming purposeless.
“So maybe the rules should have a stronger focus on the present and the future and should definitely have stronger focus on the challenges of high levels of wages and the transfer market. The solution of this is not easy.”