Man City's hefty fine for failure to meet financial fair play regulations (amongst others) is set to be doled out between clubs who haven't bought their way to success
Hands up who thought UEFA would never get around to taking money off Europe's "oil money" clubs? I'll admit I didn't think they'd ever muster up the courage to sanction clubs such as Man City, who are obviously still flaunting financial regulations, but it seems that soon the clubs that do abide by the rules will benefit by getting a slice of the fine collected from all the clubs who fell foul of UEFA's guidelines.
The Telegraph are reporting (link) that the fund created by the fines is around £20million, and that it's to be shared out to teams who played in the Champions League & Europa League last season equally. That will see the Swans pocket around £212,000, which while it's hardly a game-changing amount isn't bad just for running your club the way it's supposed to be run. I can't help but wonder how much Man City have been fined though if the total pot is £20million, and whether it makes an iota of difference to them.
An article I found from the Independent back in January shows that one of the measures City have taken to avoid sanctions is to sell intellectual property to related parties. This raised them £22.45million, but what did they sell, and to who? Well, they sold "services" to Melbourne Heart, Manchester City Ladies FC & New York FC, all "franchises" owned by the same people who own Man City. How is that allowed? Even with that considered, Man City had made losses of £149.5million across the two years prior to January. When you consider the amount of money available to City's owners, even if they were the recipients of the entire £20million fine it's likely to make little difference.
The only thing that's really likely to halt club's prolific spending is the ban from the Champions League, which City have reportedly avoided thanks to their creative money-shifting. I think if Man City can still pass FFP rules with their current level of spending the threshold needs to come in even further, though I'm sure Europe's elite would have something to say about that.
As for the Swans, getting two hundred thousand pounds for nothing must seem like the stuff of dreams. Ten years ago we'd resorted to paying tradesmen working on our crumbling Vetch home with season tickets, such was the dearth of cash available. Now we're getting £212k just for abiding by laws everyone should be following anyway, and we got a £250k sell-on fee in the week after Emyr Huws joined Wigan from Man City. That's almost half a million pound which I'm sure we'll put to good use.
Hopefully in future the financial disparity between clubs owned by oligarchs and clubs run in a sustainable fashion will diminish. Until then it's likely the rest of us will just have to aim to be "the best of the rest".