Paris Saint-Germain will be punished by Uefa for Neymar deal - but not until next year
Having spent £199 million on Neymar, Paris Saint-Germain are pursuing Kylian Mbappé for a similar amount and will likely present the sternest test thus far of Uefa’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations.
One of the problems with FFP, which limits the losses a club can sustain, is that far too many people don’t seem to understand how it works. Crucially, they fail to grasp two aspects of FFP.
The sanction could extend to a transfer ban and being thrown out of the Champions League One, is that you cannot say that PSG have breached FFP for the simple reason that there is no way it could have happened — not yet anyway. FFP covers profit and loss over a three-year period. Neymar (and Mbappé, should he be signed) fall into the 2017-18 season, which has only just begun. The earliest we will know whether Uefa believes a breach has occurred is in the autumn of 2018, when PSG will be assessed on 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2017-18.
It’s hugely unlikely that PSG will find enough new and legitimate revenue streams between now and the end of the season. Tonnes of pie-in-the-sky nonsense has been spewed about how shirts sales and Qatari-related workarounds can make it happen. Even a superstar such as Neymar, given how royalties and clothing deals work, will move the needle by only a few million when it comes to the former. As for the latter, as we’ve seen in the past, Uefa assesses related-party transactions — ie sponsorship from Qatari companies or entities associated with the club owners — at “fair market” value. There is very little scope for cooking the books there.
Still, until the 2017-18 accounting period is over, we simply will not be able to make a definitive conclusion either way.
The other point has to do with how FFP works and addresses whether PSG will get away with the proverbial “slap on the wrist”. In 2014, PSG (and Manchester City) were found to be in breach of FFP and were sanctioned with fines, spending restrictions and limits on squad registrations. What many fail to remember though is that this punishment was not handed out by Uefa’s Club Financial Control Body (CFCB), whose job it is to patrol and enforce FFP. Rather, it was a “settlement agreement” — effectively, a plea bargain — negotiated by PSG and Uefa, led by Gianni Infantino, who is now the Fifa president and was then Uefa’s general secretary.
By agreeing the settlement, PSG avoided the case being sent to the CFCB’s adjudicatory chamber, which is composed of independent judges. This is where the cynics will conclude that Uefa will simply let PSG off easily just as it did in 2014. But there is one key difference. Any affected club, which is to say any club in European competition, is free to challenge the settlement. And if this happens, it goes to the adjudicatory chamber. In 2014, nobody appealed against the sanctions imposed on PSG, arguing they were too soft. This time, should PSG be in breach, there is good reason to believe that Barcelona and others will oppose any settlement and force the case to go to the adjudicatory chamber.
If that happens, and PSG are found to be in breach, there is every reason to believe they would have the book thrown at them, mainly because they’d be reoffending. At that point, the sanction could go beyond a fine and spending restrictions and extend to a transfer ban and being thrown out of the Champions League.
Aleksander Ceferin, the Uefa president, has hinted at devices like wage caps and luxury taxes to level the playing field. Uefa and the European Clubs Association (which is heavily weighted towards the bigger clubs) are 50/50 partners in a new company that will market Champions League rights. That means the game’s traditional blue-bloods — including Barcelona and others with an axe to grind with PSG — are effectively Uefa’s business partners.
All of this suggests that if PSG fail to come up with a credible explanation as to how they can afford Neymar, Uefa will take them to task. If they don’t, there will be hell to pay.
Source (behind paywall): https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/the-game/paris-saint-germain-will-be-punished-by-uefa-for-neymar-deal-but-not-until-next-year-955q56bf0
