UEFA’s FFP Changes Are A Joke, But Celtic Fans Know They Always Were.

A story broke yesterday that, in the circumstances of the Ibrox melt-down, almost got away from me. UEFA has started to roll out its changes to Financial Fair Play, and frankly they are joke and, to be blunt, even a disgrace.

They are now focussed on wages rather than spending. Clubs can spend what they like, as long as their salary isn’t 70% of their income.

These changes are pure pandering to the super clubs and leave the entire structure of FFP essentially shredded. The governing bodies have rolled over and replaced a set-up which barely functioned with one that won’t function at all.

It is gutless beyond belief, and it could impact on our club at some point because we have, on occasion, strayed over the 70% of income mark. To be honest though, I’m not in the least bit concerned by that prospect.

Everyone in football should be concerned at the way in which the FFP regulations, which many clubs adopted on their own and which leagues all across Europe imposed on their clubs, has been broken down so utterly. The game might as well be lawless.

Let us be honest though; as far as our doorstep goes, the rules which existed were a farce anyway, and you only had to look across the city to understand it. Our league was one of the few in Europe which didn’t implement domestic FFP and European compliance was monitored by our own governing body.

As such, Ibrox was allowed to drive over them with a tank. Either the SFA was reporting absolute nonsense to UEFA or UEFA itself interprets the results in ways that bear no relationship to what we were led to expect.

When a Scottish club can find ways to make a mockery of the regulations there was no way that the bigger clubs would be living in fear of them. On the few occasions when major clubs were sanctioned they appealed and they challenge the rules at every turn.

The framework needed tearing down, but the one that is being built instead of it is even more ridiculous and ineffectual. The irony is that Ibrox has frequently been above the 70% of income line (I think, in fact, that they are right now) and thus might even have had more to fear from these rules, except that there is enough wiggle room in the rules to let them ignore those too.

Financial Fair Play existed to ensure sporting integrity.

But it also existed to protect clubs from themselves. These new regulations don’t come close to doing that, they are a recipe for disaster and will only let teams spend their way to the point of collapse.

Now you can run up debts as high as you like and the only concern UEFA will have is if your income to wage ratio is within the rules. It is preposterous. If the Ibrox board wasn’t already backing away from high-spending they could do what they liked.

UEFA really doesn’t work any better than the SFA.

Football is incapable of looking out for itself. A handful of clubs drives the agenda, and there’s no sign that anyone in the governing body has the stomach for a fight to change that.