UEFA president Michel Platini's plan to force clubs in European football to spend no more than they earn was tonight described as "unrealistic" and "impossible" by Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore.
Clubs of a certain size will be obliged to balance their books so they will not be allowed to spend more than the revenue they generate.
The scheme is to be gradually implemented over a three-year period and is expected to be fully in force by season 2012-13, and will be overseen by UEFA's new Club Financial Control Panel.
Scudamore believes the new system will prove unworkable.
He told talkSPORT: "Ultimately, you will have to do things like levelling out all the tax rates (across Europe), levelling out all the state subsidies in stadia.
"So if you are going to have financial fair play, which we don't think you can realistically do, you would have to level out all these things. That's never going to happen in our view.
"You would have to level out immigration in terms of the rules that allow players in [to a country].
"These are concerns that we have, but they have to be put in to the mix of all the other vagaries.
"It's unrealistic because ultimately if you're going to regulate how much a club can spend to its earnings, then you have to regulate earnings, every single bit of it.
"You'd have to regulate everyone's ticket pricing. If you were going to regulate costs as a percentage of income then you would have to regulate income and surely we're not going to regulate income. That would be impossible."
UEFA chief executive David Taylor, who will soon leave that post to head up the governing body's new marketing company, recently warned English clubs about the dangers of over-extending themselves financially.
The scheme is to be gradually implemented over a three-year period and is expected to be fully in force by season 2012-13, and will be overseen by UEFA's new Club Financial Control Panel.
Scudamore believes the new system will prove unworkable.
He told talkSPORT: "Ultimately, you will have to do things like levelling out all the tax rates (across Europe), levelling out all the state subsidies in stadia.
"So if you are going to have financial fair play, which we don't think you can realistically do, you would have to level out all these things. That's never going to happen in our view.
"You would have to level out immigration in terms of the rules that allow players in [to a country].
"These are concerns that we have, but they have to be put in to the mix of all the other vagaries.
"It's unrealistic because ultimately if you're going to regulate how much a club can spend to its earnings, then you have to regulate earnings, every single bit of it.
"You'd have to regulate everyone's ticket pricing. If you were going to regulate costs as a percentage of income then you would have to regulate income and surely we're not going to regulate income. That would be impossible."
UEFA chief executive David Taylor, who will soon leave that post to head up the governing body's new marketing company, recently warned English clubs about the dangers of over-extending themselves financially.
Copyright (c) Press Association
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