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Villa owner criticises spending rules

The billionaire owner of Aston Villa has called for an overhaul of the Premier League’s rule book on spending, complaining that the current system had turned English football into a “financial game”. Nassef Sawiris, Egypt’s richest man, said existing regulations governing what clubs can spend were preventing ambitious owners from challenging the established elite, and the system of penalties for breaking the rules lacked transparency.

Sawiris, who owns Aston Villa alongside US private equity billionaire Wes Edens, also described the Premier League’s so-called profit and sustainability rules as “anti-competitive”, and said he was seeking legal advice on whether to lodge a formal complaint against them. “Some of the rules have actually resulted in cementing the status quo more than creating upward mobility and fluidity in the sport,” he told the Financial Times in an interview. “The rules do not make sense and are not good

Sawiris said regulations limiting how much a club can lose over a three-year period — brought in to prevent reckless overspending — had instead created some perverse incentives for owners, such as encouraging investment in music venues to boost non-sporting revenue, or prioritising sales of homegrown players to maximise accounting profits.

 “Managing a sports team has become more like being a treasurer or a bean counter rather than looking at what your team needs,” he said. “It’s more about creating paper profits, not real profits. It becomes a financial game, not a sporting game.”

Sawiris complained financial regulations that incentivise sales of homegrown talent in effect penalise a club’s loyalty and commitment to their own young players. Selling an academy player — valued at zero in the books because of accounting rules — allows a club to book an immediate profit. However, management can then spend the proceeds on new players but spread the cost over several years of accounts. “This obvious flaw is to the detriment of the fans,” he said.

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