European clubs ready but reticent on financial curbs

European football clubs on Tuesday signalled their readiness to clamp down on ever younger youth transfers and consider a more equal playing field in financial terms.

However, after a first general assembly of the European Clubs Association in Geneva they baulked at idea’s floated by UEFA officials on full-blooded cost controls on clubs and adult transfers, senior club representatives said.

“We all agree there is a problem, but there are no simple solutions” said ECA Chairman, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge.

The clearest outcome of the meeting was widespread concern amongst the 95 clubs taking part about “unscupulous practices” with clubs snapping up ever younger footballing talent in their young teens from South America and Europe.

“We believe we have to intervene to stop this kind of business, we don’t like it,” Rummenigge told journalists.

However, the clubs concluded that it was still “complex and difficult” to find the best approach.

The ECA said in a statement that it was prepared to endorse a programme aiming to strengthen a ban on international transfers of under 18 year olds into and within Europe.

It urged football’s European and world governing bodies UEFA and FIFA to work jointly with the leagues and FIFPro players? representatives to find ways of incorporating health and education concerns in a young player’s first professional contract.

Rummenigge also dismissed the idea of self-regulation by ECA clubs on youth transfers, despite what he called clear concern in the meeting.

“The experience with gentlemen’s agreements is that they don’t work in such cases,” he told journalists.

The outcome on spiralling club finances and the growing gap between big, wealthy top clubs and smaller sides was even less clear cut.

While there was a “clear majority in favour of financial fair play” and a possible licensing system for European competition, there was far more reticence about concrete limits on costs, Rummenigge said.