'Revolutionary' Belgian lawyer setting sight to change UEFA's FFP rules

Belgian lawyer Jean-Louis Dupont, who revolutionized football once before by transforming its transfer system, has now set sights to change UEFA's new Financial Fair Play (FFP) regime.

FFP, which has become the curse of Europe's richest football clubs especially English champion Manchester City and French side Paris Saint-German, is designed to prevent clubs spending beyond their means and posting unsustainable yearly losses.

However, Dupont is of the opinion that these sanctions are completely illegal as they restrict competition, which is a key principle of European Union law, CNN reported.

Dunlop said that the break-even requirement is in itself is a pure violation of EU competition law and any sanction that aims at enforcing an illegal rule is automatically illegal.

The Belgian lawyer said that although FFP sounds good, as it supports good governance and fairness of the game, but when one scratches the surface, the break-even rule is no more than a prohibition to invest.

Dupont believes that FFP raises further competition concerns by establishing the status quo and not allowing clubs like City and PSG to challenge the established football order in future.

Dupont added that UEFA prohibits the owner of a club to spend his own money in the club, at least to buy players, in order to make it grow and to challenge the established top dogs, and that would result in the few top European clubs to remain the same forever, with no new kid in town.

However, UEFA defended its FFP regulations by saying that it completely rejects the suggestion that the break-even requirement may lead to any restriction of competition in the market for matches played in UEFA club tournaments.

UEFA said that the FFP rules emerged from a wide-reaching consultative process involving all relevant stakeholders in European football and as such there is no doubt that the rules have democratic legitimacy since they were the product of an inclusive and democratic process.