Platini set to propose plans to sports ministers.
Platini set to propose plans to sports ministers. UEFA president Michel Platini was to meet with European sports ministers Thursday to urge them to accept his plan to control spending at clubs and to curtail their buying of Europe’s best young players.
Platini and FIFA president Sepp Blatter were to address the gathering of ministers from the 27 European Union members who are considering giving sports federations freedom to run their own affairs through exemptions from some Europe-wide laws. Formal discussions over the main points will continue on Friday and any proposed changes would have to then be put to the European Union.
Platini has long been at odds with English clubs since proposing to take away one automatic qualification place for the Champions League, and has previously criticized the levels of money flowing through the English game.
He wants a tougher set of rules to curb spending power and to ban the transfer of players under 18. Platini has worked with French President Nicolas Sarkozy to promote his agenda during France’s six-month EU presidency.
Platini’s plans have drawn support from French football league president Frederic Thiriez and Bayern Munich chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, who also leads the European Club Association which last year replaced the G-14.
Rummenigge called on the EU to ensure that football clubs were included at the center of all decision-making in establishing guidelines and frameworks designed to improve governance and fair play in professional football.
“Consultation alone is not enough,” Rummenigge said in an ECA statement Thursday. “Decisions with a direct influence on clubs, their management, employees and fans need to be discussed and sanctioned by those stakeholders.”
Thiriez said “sport is not an economic activity like any other” and thinks football urgently needs regulating.
“In no way can (football) be left to the forces of the market,” Thiriez said in a statement on the LFP Web site. “First of all, for sporting, social and cultural reasons. But also, and perhaps above all, because non-regulated free competition in sport brings about its own death.”
Thiriez added that “the gap is getting bigger between the rich and the others” and that goes against the spirit of competition “because it’s always the same ones” who win.
“That’s why it’s a necessity to have regulation,” Thiriez said. “To guarantee equality in sport and its glorious unpredictability”.
If Platini’s plan is accepted, it could effectively outlaw the transfer of talented youngsters and impose stricter financial rules, forcing the game’s biggest clubs to better develop homegrown talent.
However, European laws forbid restrictions on labor movement, and no country in the bloc of 27 inside the EU can yet stop workers from moving around the member states.
Blatter, the head of football’s world governing body, will also lobby in Biarritz for his “6+5″ plan, which would force clubs in every country to begin matches with at least six players eligible for the national team and no more than five foreigners. The proposal is currently illegal under EU law.
French sports minister Bernard Laporte, the former national rugby team coach, will also attend the meeting.
Football officials in England, meanwhile, and the British sports minister Gerry Sutcliffe have opposed Platini’s plans.
Sutcliffe said this week he would resist any attempt to promote Europe-wide regulation of football finances.
They see a conspiracy to stop English dominance of the Champions League, the world’s most lucrative club competition which spread ?585 million ($758 million) in prize money among 32 elite clubs last season.
Manchester United and Liverpool have both won it in the past four seasons, while English clubs have been runners-up for three straight years.
With foreign investors eager to buy up English clubs, huge sums of money have been invested, and UEFA fears that will diminish healthy competition.
English clubs, which have flourished with wealthy foreign owners able to shoulder large debts, object to the idea of UEFA restraints on their spending ability.
The purchases of United by the Glazer family and Chelsea by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich would not have been possible in countries like France and Germany, which have stricter ownership rules.
If ministers in Biarritz declare their support for the right of sports to self-regulate, the agenda will be advanced further when Sarkozy chairs a European Council meeting on Dec. 11-12 in Brussels.
The EU presidency passes to the Czech Republic in January, and Platini traveled to Prague earlier this month to meet deputy prime minister Alexandr Vondra, who will take responsibility for protecting sport’s autonomy in any new legislation.
Ministers in Biarritz are also set to discuss issues relating to sport and health, notably anti-doping initiatives.
