By Andrew Warshaw
September 29 – After being besieged by constant condemnation of third-party ownership, FIFA has finally agreed to ban the practise – but only after a transitional period has been phased in.
Football’s world governing agreed last week to set up a working group, headed by former English FA chairman Geoff Thompson, to draft legal rules that would prohibit outside investors from profiting from transfers.
The practise of economic rights of players being shared amongst private investors (and now often investment funds) has been a common practice in South America and a few European countries but is banned in others, including England and Germany, and has caused increasing and widespread concern, particularly in the area of transfers and fees paid.
“We took a firm decision that TPO [third-party ownership] should be banned but it cannot be banned immediately – there will be a transitional period,” said FIFA president Sepp Blatter.
“Furthermore, there is little doubt that third-party investors do influence the transfer policies of clubs even though FIFA rules expressly forbid this. These are actually the findings of FIFA’s own – detailed – research into this subject.”
UEFA president Michel Platini has repeatedly urged FIFA to act on third-party ownership, which is already outlawed in some countries, and ideally wants new rules before next season to stop investment companies taking a stake in players. Earlier this month UEFA’s general secretary Gianni Infantino warned that they would take action unilaterally if FIFA failed to act.
UEFA believes the practice drains huge sums of money from the sport and leads players to be transferred regularly simply to generate profits for the rights owners, who often have nothing to do with football.
The players’ union FIFPro welcomed any move to remove outside investors interfering in players’ careers. “A TPO ban cannot come soon enough,” FIFPro Secretary-General Theo van Seggelen said in a statement. “Every day that TPO exists is a lost day.”
FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke said details will be agreed by the executive committee in December or, at the latest, March but cautioned a full ban could only take effect in three or four years’ time since clubs will need time to buy out some investors and for current affected contracts to expire.
The scale of getting to grips with TPO is a daunting challenge as Valcke admitted.
“The ban cannot be implemented immediately and we are discussing the number of transfer windows we have to wait for this ban to come in,” Valcke said. “It’s a matter of whether we are talking about six transfer windows, meaning three years, or eight, meaning four years, this is what we will be discussing in this working group.”
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