The UEFA Financial Fair Play; An Inspiration from the French DNCG?

Hi all,
UEFA is being very vocal about their Financial Fair Play initiative, driven by this willingness to end the financial “madness” happening in modern football. Recently, Michel Platini and his staff released the club licensing report to ensure football’s financial stability. However, the french Ligue 1 has got the DNCG (National Directorate for Control and Management), an organisation which control professional club’s finances. Futebolfinance published a fantastic article about the DNCG I would like to share with you.

The best example of an organism of this species in Europe is in France, where the DNCG (National Directorate for Control and Management) ensures the legal and financial control of the clubs to ensure compliance with the obligations Financial clubs. Thus we leave the sites of major importance concerning the composition and functions of the DNCG, to serve as a reflection on both managers, as the fans who really have an interest in ending the bad management that have hurt both clubs and players.

Composition

• The DNCG consists of a Control Commission of Professional Clubs, a Federal Commission and Regional Control Club and a Committee of Appeal.
• The committees comprise members of all relevant entities related to national football, federation, league, Associations and Clubs, Players Associations (Union), etc …

Skills

• Ensure that clubs comply with the regulations required for participation in trials.
• Get the clubs all the documents necessary to effect control of your financial activity.
• Examine and monitor the legal and financial situation of clubs according to the standards required by the Federation and the League Cup.
• Implement measures penalizing clubs that do not meet the required specifications.
• Published accounts of clubs

Penalties

• Ban on recruitment of new players.
• Recruitment of players through a budget or a limited payroll.
• Limits on the number of player transfers
• Relegation
• Prohibition of practicing sports
• Exclusion of the competitions

Public reporting

• Overall summary report of financial activity of all clubs (Ligue 1 and Ligue 2)
• Report’s annual state of the state and national football.

Like it or not, today the French League clubs are the clubs that Europeans have fewer financial problems and in more than 60 annual audits that makes DNCG clubs in Leagues 1 and 2, the most common penalty is establishing a budget for hiring or imposes limits on the payroll of the clubs, which continue to be an educational penalty. The accounts of all the French clubs are available and accessible to all fans, unlike the accounts of the Portuguese clubs, where in many cases to consult their reports and accounts you must be a club member in question and appear in its general assembly.

Last month FIFA president Sepp Blatter praised and highlighted as an example the French league with regard to the situation and financial transparency in Ligue 1 and Ligue 2. The French football is today an example for everyone either financially or at the sports level. Soon we will analyze the structure of training players used to FFF, who instead of living from prospecting and training of some clubs, created a common plan of rules and regulations for all clubs to develop the training of athletes respecting the highest standards of quality established by the Federation.

[Source: Futebolfinance.com]

It’s only fair to say that the french Ligue 1 is not competing with the same financial weapons as the Barclays Premier League, the Serie A or La Liga. Chelsea reported today a £70.9m loss.  A similar situation for ANY french club would trigger a relegation to 2nd or 3rd league by the DNCG.

The Financial Fair Play “should” establish a unique and fair financial platform for all european clubs, because so far, the french clubs have been suffering long enough from this unfair competition!

Karl Lusbec