Fairness in Football? Financial Doping, and Sport vs Entertainment

The world is unfair. Life is unfair. There is no equal distribution of luck and attributes; and no one chooses the situation into which they are born.

But sport needs to be as fair as possible within the natural bounds of what is physically and mentally (and legally) achievable.

Whataboutery and false equivalency reigns, but it seems that Everton merited their points deduction by flouting the rules, and spending beyond the point where they knew it was dangerous. Equally, how other clubs have escaped the same punishments for what seems like far more repeated breaches seems unfair on Everton.

But it makes sense to start cracking down at some point; if no further crackdowns arise for others who break the rules and laws, then I’m on Everton's side.

The European Super League, brought up as something the big clubs got away with without a points deduction, was not a Premier League breakaway, but a UEFA breakaway. And who trusts UEFA anymore? Maybe the same people who trust FIFA?

It was not illegal, and even if unpalatable in many ways, it did not merit any points-based sanctions – as they were not in the rules; now they are.

Just as Chelsea didn't breach FFP before 2010 ... as there was no FFP before 2010.

If there was, they'd have been expelled, as no other club has still spent as much relative to other clubs than Chelsea in the mid-2000s when adjusted for this site's football inflation. (Or they'd have spent less, and possibly hidden a ton of payments.)

Any new attempts to breakaway from UEFA would now mean Premier League points deductions. Fair enough. That's how rules and laws are supposed to work.

If there were no FFP, Man City and Newcastle would be utterly unstoppable.

They could do what the Saudi league has done, only do so with the elite world players and managers. No one else could compete unless owned by Qatar, or China when they were spending like crazy. Nation states could pay players £1m a week to sit on the bench; £3m a week to play; £5m a week to play; £10m a week to play – the same difference. They would spend billions more than traditionally-run clubs, as their wealth is almost endless.

It could still go wrong, as sport can do that; but to spend billions (plural) on a squad and billions on annual wages would increase the chances of winning to over 90%, against anyone bar those state-owned clubs doing the same. The Premier League would be Saudi Arabia vs Abu Dhabi.

So as bad as Bayern Munich are in Germany as beneficiaries of FFP, at least it has stopped the Abramovich-on-steroids approach that nation states could have taken without it, that could have killed the sport in many ways; imagine PSG allowed to spend 10x more money in the French league, and how much fun that would be for everyone.

No solution will be ever 100% fair – life is about compromises, not perfection – but if football has no competitive balance, it ceases to be a sport.

What's interesting is what happens next.

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