UEFA is a Four-Letter Word

This week, UEFA pulled the “Go ask your mother” move… again. After re-ruling in January, then Milan trying to talk some sense into them, they further delayed their new ruling until that one was decided in the Court of Arbitration for Sport. It seems they can’t rule properly on their own Financial Fair Play guidelines to save their lives, but are becoming experts at inhibiting Milan’s ability to rebuild and progress. They have literally put the four-letter words into FFP.

Irony

I don’t even have it in me to recap how many times UEFA have delayed their rulings. Always delaying our moves in the mercato, and always bringing in some bizarre reasoning for their rulings that they didn’t use for other teams. Their disciplinary committee is so far out of touch with what Financial Fair Play even means, let alone what is responsible and practical for a team to be able to accomplish realistically.

To make matters worse, they don’t enforce their decisions fairly. For example, as we talked about on the last podcast, Inter was recently released from their three year settlement agreement after four years of sanctions, despite never meeting their goals even one year. Whereas Milan have changed ownership twice and never been offered a settlement agreement.

Bans, bans everywhere, and not a settlement agreement in sight

This time, having given us a ruling in January that was delayed six months after their initial summer ruling was overturned by the CAS, they were expected to give us a decision on the 2017-18 Yonghong Li era within the past two weeks. But this week, they deferred that decision, waiting to see how the CAS would rule on their January decision. Kind of like when your parents defer to each other so as not to have to answer your question. Their initial decision would have given us three years to comply. In January, it was down to two and a half. Now it is already at two years, and they are further timewasting while being irresponsible. They are holding us to their timeframe, even when the CAS determines their ruling was unfair in the first place, and now they are running down the clock as a way to impose their unfair rulings after all.

The CAS is an independent body of sporting judges, and now that we are forced to push our case through (since talking to UEFA did absolutely nothing since January,) we will likely have a ruling from the CAS relatively quickly, like within six weeks. But UEFA waits six months to rule, despite being the governing body for the program they are administering. And now, even when they have waited, they won’t even rule. That’s six months that costs Milan precious time in the mercato, precious money in lawyer fees, and precious time on their disciplinary clock that we are being held to. Now where is the “fair” in that FFP?

Give yourselves a yellow for timewasting, UEFA

Financial Fair Play is not about sport, and it’s not about business. It doesn’t support responsibility in either world, and no one wins. UEFA are anything but fair with their decisions, comparing Inter and Milan’s treatment alone makes that obvious. But with their embarrassing and unprofessional continued delays, it has become a complete joke. Why must teams meet their goals within their timeframe when they can’t even rule in a reasonable time? Why do they get to run down the clock when we can’t even get a settlement agreement? For these and so many more reasons, UEFA is a four-letter word.

This post inspired by the music of NIN’s “Head Like a Hole”