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Can big clubs evade FFP rules?

There is concern that whereas smaller clubs comply with Uefa rulings on financial fair play, big clubs employ legal teams to challenge Uefa's decisions or use creative schemes to avoid punishment for overspending. Efforts by some of Europe's biggest teams to circumvent FFP have put the future of the regulatory regime in doubt. This in spite of the fact that Uefa claims that it is a success with clubs making a combined profit of €600m in 2017 compared with a combined loss of €1.7bn in 2011.

One possible way forward is to reduce the complexity of FFP rules by placing focus on the source of a club's revenues. The rules are intended to ensure that clubs break even or, at most, have €30m of losses over three seasons.

Last week Paris Saint-Germain successfully challenged an investigation into the club's claimed breaches of FFP rules in the past. AC Milan and Galatasaray have also lodged successful appeals against Uefa in FFP-related cases over the past year. They took their cases to the Court for Arbitration of Sport in Lausanne where they won on procedural grounds.

Investigations continue into Manchester City with allegations that it inflated the value of sponsorship deals with undeclared additional funding from its owner Sheikh Mansour. It has also been claimed that City set up a shell company to pay players for 'image rights' in an effort to take millions off the wage bill.

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