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AEK Athens vs. Olympiakos Piraeus
Athens, Greece
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Rivals, The Offbeat Guide To The 92 League Clubs, is one of the best derby books available.
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Football, like wider society, has become a game of financial polarities. The rich clubs seem to have unlimited resources and take the opportunity to ‘buy success.’ British teams like Man City and Chelsea seem to pool all of the best talent and leave the rest of the league looking pretty mediocre. In Spain, Real Madrid and Barcelona have taken over La Liga with sheer spending capacity. Football has been monopolised by the teams with the best backing.
Many contributors suggest that football has ventured too far away from being a level playing field and the game is being ruined by financial excess. This has lead UEFA to implement a set of Financial Fair Play (FFP) plans which seek to make Europe’s teams go some way to balancing their books by 2018.
UEFA president Michele Platini has charged Jean-luc Dehaene with the task of enforcing the new regulations and devising the most effective plans to curb financial excess. The ultimate goal is that by 2018 European clubs will all have deficits which run at £8.8 million or less.
The football world seems to be taking lessons from the financial sector. With mega rich Arab owners becoming prominent in the UK game there is certainly the reality of great inequality between the clubs and potentially high levels of toxic debt.
Clubs will therefore need to balance their income with their outgoings which may lead to teams trying to cover up their dealings under the guise of increased sponsorships. Dehaene is attempting to prepare for any kind of creative accounting by making his team aware of any loopholes.
Punishments for exceeding limits will be banishment from European competition and possibly teams being prevented from fielding players who have contributed to the excess. Ideally UEFA may venture towards things like wage caps but in a less formal sense than the American sports model.
Excessive financing is certainly reducing competition in the game and UEFA’s plans, although somewhat vague, are a step in the right direction.
If you are thinking of placing a bet on an upcoming football fixture and would like to keep in touch with the latest scores on that game, then make sure you head over to footballscores.com!
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