Michel Platini, Uefa president, says competitive football is under threat in Europe unless sports are exempted from EU rules on free movement of labour in order to counter the recruiting power of the richest clubs.
Transcript
For the full interview, including Michel Platini on his philosophy, the Tevez case, and the commercialisation and financing of football
Uefa and Fifa, the European and world football governing bodies, say the leading clubs are so wealthy that less well-off teams will struggle to compete on the pitch without some restrictions on the movement of players.
The European Commission is drawing up a white paper on sport. Member states (especially sports ministers), MEPs, and national sporting bodies are lobbying Brussels to recognise the 2000 Nice declaration, which acknowledged the special status of sport in society.
“I hope they will listen to the world of sport,” Mr Platini said. “I am very afraid of the bad decisions they will take for the future of sport. It’s an important moment, and I hope they will understand what people want for the future of sport.”
The Commission is opposed to exempting sports clubs from competition rules, and says an overhaul of the current regime would require the unanimous support of 27 EU governments.
Sports bodies enjoy autonomy in setting the rules of their games, but they are subject to competition rules and all other EU legislation when it comes to their commercial activities.
“We recognise that sport is special, both culturally and legally. Sporting rules fall outside the competition rules, as they should. Where the competition rules do get involved is in the commercial side of sport,” the spokesman for Neelie Kroes, EU competition commissioner, said.
Mr Platini told the FT national associations feared that without a change in the rules rich club owners would continue to use employment tribunals and court cases to keep their top players out of national squads.
The European Court of Justice is hearing a case brought by the Belgian club Charleroi and other elite clubs over whether players have the right to refuse to play for their national teams.
“It’s sport, it is not a product. It is part of our life,” Mr Platini said. “If they say it is a product, it is the end of our sport.”
Mr Platini, one of France’s greatest players and the organiser of France’s World Cup in 1998, was elected to one of the biggest sports governing jobs in January, and has just completed 100 days in the job.
He is bracing himself for a battle with Ms Kroes and Charlie McCreevy, commissioner in charge of internal markets, and says he is ready to appeal over the heads of unelected bureaucrats – who he says have no inkling of the importance of sport to society – to heads of government who are more sympathetic because of football’s popularity.
“You can’t kill the philosophy of 150 years of football, a social activity, because of a commissioner who has never played sport, because of the simple right that a sportsman is a worker,” said Mr Platini.
Mr Platini says he agrees with Fifa’s attempt to limit the number of foreign players in clubs, but such an outcome in Europe was “impossible” because of EU rules on freedom of labour.
Instead, he wants to strengthen football academies by enforcing rules that require teenagers to start their careers with the clubs that train them. “If you can buy the best youth, you never offer the chance for another team to win,” he said.
Uefa has a chilly relationship with the lucrative and internationally popular UK Premier League, but Mr Platini is looking to bring Europe’s elite clubs into Uefa’s fold more than previously, setting up places for clubs and players in a new strategic council that will be agreed at Uefa’s congress in Zurich on May 28.
Additional reporting by Tobias Buck in Brussels
