Financial fair play blarney. Why not football fair play?

The game of football is broken and the financial fair play rules, confirmed in May last year, only goes to further prove this. I can't prove this to you now, but trust me, the big clubs in England, Spain and Italy will still be the big clubs in ten years time.

But I'm a cynical bastard at the best of times. However, I'm not expecting these regulations to change anything - in fact all they are going to do is confirm the top teams and not allow any others in.

Where there's a will

Maybe my cynicism is climbing to new heights, but if clubs can not go into debt and clubs have to break even at the end of each financial year, no clubs are going to be able to take the risks necessary to get to the next level. All it is going to do is make sure the big clubs are the only clubs that can pay the big salaries, which in essence, is why the biggest clubs have the biggest debt, because that is exactly what they have done.

But some might find a way. You see, financial fair play regulations are in place if you want to play in European competition. Maybe a club will decide that they will sacrifice the competition to do better in their domestic league. Don't get me wrong, I'd love my club to play in the Champions League, but I'd sacrifice entry into that competition without a second thought if it meant we would stand a chance of winning the domestic league.

Would you give up European football for three or four seasons if your team could win the league? Frankly, the Champions League format is a bit comical so here is my next prediction; within ten season, the likes of Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal will be playing in a European Super League and they will have left domestic football.

The basics of financial fair play from UEFA

I'm not going to bore you with every rule because you can download them here, but there are three key ones.

• Break-even requirement – clubs must not spend more than they generate over a period of time
• No overdues payable during the season – towards other clubs, employees and/or social/tax authorities
• Provision of future financial information – to ensure clubs can meet their future obligations

UEFA are taking steps in the right direction but these rules were put together with the help of the clubs. The clubs haven't agreed to anything that they didn't want to and the really big clubs would have come to an agreement together before confirming with UEFA what they would accept, of that you can be sure.

But they need to get it right and that will only come when they scrap financial fair play and move to a better model.

Football fair play

Yes, I'm a cynical bastard but I'm also an idealist. Why can't we change the rules to make the game fair. Why can't we say, the most a player can receive in any given season is £2,000,000 from signing on fees, salaries and endorsements? You'll say it is breaking European Law or restriction of trade - but I'll argue back that it is just a game and games have rules and to play this game you are not allowed to earn more than that.

Isn't this exactly what UEFA are doing? They're saying, to business, if you want to play our game, you have to break even. Why can the Premier League or La Liga or Serie A say that no single player can earn more than a set amount each season?

I know it isn't as easy as I'm making out, but the game is broken and it is going to take something radical to fix it, because as things stand now - where is the fun in knowing your team doesn't stand a chance at the start of the season? It wasn't like that twenty years ago.