Soccer has now become more than mare a sport; nowadays, it is a complete money making industry with interests from clubs, owners, and third parties who used to invest in players’ value and this third party investment has long been criticized by many notables including UEFA president Michel Platini, coz according to many game professionals, it detaches players from the game and makes them just a piece of money. UEFA, among others, has long been opposing FIFA’s policy to let it go about third parties investment in players which sometime enables clubs sell their key players without any sporting reason. But now, a commendable change has been proposed by the FIFA Executive Committee who has voted to completely ban this alien investment from the game. Notably, these kinds of stakeholders are already banned in England but in some parts of the world including but not limited to America, Spain, and Portugal it is still one of biggest money making opportunity for business houses who regularly put a large amount over players’ movement in every transfer window.
Despite recommendations from executive committee, no such practice can be immediately banned as governing body legally requires to give some transitional time to all the stake holders to divert or withdraw their investments from the game. Yet, Blatter has promised their working group is working over drafting the policy regarding this and very soon no third party will be allowed to make any investment in any player.
Informing about state of their backend, Blatter said, “We took a firm decision that TPO should be banned but it cannot be banned immediately – there will be a transitional period.
“Furthermore, there is little doubt that third-party investors do influence the transfer policies of clubs even though FIFA rules expressly forbid this. These are actually the findings of FIFA’s own — detailed — research into this subject. So, it’s now time to act, and if FIFA does not address the problem, then UEFA will.”
What Platini had said about this practice some time back is, “It threatens the integrity of our competitions, damages football’s image, poses a long-term threat to clubs’ finances and even raises questions about human dignity.” While FIFA’s Players’ Status Committee has also reportedly suggested to restrict these practices now onward to maintain a level playing field without influence of money power by high net worth backed sides. FIFPro secretary-general Theo van Seggelen also said in a statement, “A TPO ban cannot come soon enough. Every day that TPO exists is a lost day.”