Last week, a number of clubs were fined for late submission of financial reports, specifically for the 2023-2024 season. The most serious case was probably AS Roma, when the Serie A representative had to pay 2 million Euros. This included a fine for violating some provisions of the Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations for the financial year ending in June 2023.
UEFA's Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) met this week to assess clubs under the new squad cost rule (SCR) which was introduced for the first time.
The SCR stipulates that the total cost of transfers, wages and agent fees for players cannot exceed a certain percentage of the club's total revenue. For the 2023-24 season, this figure is 90%. However, it will drop to around 80% for the 2024-25 campaign. It is expected to be around 70% from 2025 onwards.
All clubs reported their squad costs within the 90% limit but, in addition to Aston Villa , Marseille were also fined for late submission. The Ligue-1 side had to pay 20,000 euros, half that of the Villa Park team.
Aston Villa's summer transfer business has been severely affected by the Premier League's profit and sustainability rules (PSR), forcing Villa to offload some of their homegrown players to avoid heavy fines.
"SCR and PSR are two completely different concepts. While SCR forces you to sell expensive players, PSR forces you to sell academy talent or cheaper stars in the squad. It's difficult to balance both of these rules. I think there are some points in the Premier League that do not follow UEFA's rules.
Speaking of SCR, we can take this example. To reduce the ratio of costs to total revenue, we were lucky to sell Moussa Diaby to Al-Ittihad in Saudi Arabia. Although Diaby's price was quite high, it did not mean that the team earned a large profit. Therefore, we had to sell expensive players to narrow that gap" - shared Damian Vdiagany, director of football of Ason Villa.
AS Roma's case is different to Aston Villa's . The Italian side were placed on a four-year settlement by UEFA in 2023 after failing to break even under FFP rules. According to CFCB calculations, Roma would have been "slightly" overspent under SCR rules, which would have led to the fine.
According to Transfermarkt, Roma rushed to announce their transfer market profits for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons, before their net loss of €64 million was confirmed last month.
Unlike Roma, Inter Milan, AC Milan, Juventus, Monaco, Marseille and PSG were all placed on a settlement agreement by UEFA in 2023 after failing to meet FFP rules. However, none of the clubs have been punished this time as the CFCB continues to monitor their progress.
The most serious of these is Istanbul Basaksehir. The Turkish team could be banned from UEFA competitions for a year if next season their financial statements are not found to be valid by the FFP and CFCB.
