By Andrew Warshaw
November 19 – FIFA’s Football Committee, the body comprising some of the most influential figures in the game and charged with tackling the game’s major issues of controversy, has called for third-party ownership of players to be banned.
Third-party ownership allows agents or other representatives to buy a stake in a player from his club and profit whenever the player is transferred, a practice that has long been frowned upon in Europe but is de rigueur in South America.
The Football Committee, chaired by UEFA President Michel Platini, has requested that FIFA introduce a mandatory regulation to prohibit third-party ownership throughout the game.
Platini’s new-look group, which includes European Club Association chief Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and English Premier League boss Richard Scudamore (pictured below), has taken on the work of the disbanded Task Force Football 2014 group, which was led by former FIFA executive committee member Franz Beckenbauer but which solved few of football’s problems and ended up being primarily a talk shop.
In a diplomatic move, both Beckenbauer and Pelé, who was also part of Task Force Football 2014, have been added to the Football Committee as so-called special advisors.
With a formal mandate now in place, Platini said the committee would get to grips straight away with the relevant issues.
“This committee has a huge mandate to tackle the important issues affecting football, starting with how to combat threats to football such as match-fixing and dealing with the structure and development of the game, as well as matters that are directly related to the game itself,” said Platini.
FIFA President Sepp Blatter added: “The new composition is a veritable who’s who of football and these high-profile experts are best qualified to find the best solutions for the game.”
Beckenbauer admitted it was “a wise decision” for his former body to have joined forces with a revised Football Committee “instead of having different forums dealing with the same matters”.
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