UEFA, European soccer's governing body, has unveiled an array of punishments and fines for various clubs on the continent – including heavyweights Barcelona, Chelsea, and Porto – that have not complied with its financial regulations.
Chelsea (England) and Barcelona (Spain), alongside Lyon from France, Aston Villa of England, and Croatia's Hadjuk Split, have all agreed settlements with UEFA due to failing to comply with its football earnings rule for the financial years ending in 2023 and 2024.
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These financial punishments have been laid down by the first chamber of UEFA's Club Financial Control Body (CFCB).
Of the six specific punishments imposed, Chelsea have been fined €80 million ($93.7 million) – €20 million of which is unconditional and the other €60 million of which will be applied if the club does not keep to regulations over the next four years – while Barcelona have been fined €15 million unconditionally, as well as €45 million if they are not compliant within two years.
The final target of all these clubs is to have reached compliance with the football earnings regulations by the end of the settlement period, UEFA has said. The fines themselves are proportionate to the amount each club was over the regulatory limit.
In addition, all clubs "agreed to reach intermediate annual targets, and to the application of conditional financial and sporting measures should these targets not be met," while there have also been restrictions imposed on how many new players they can register for 2025-26.
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By GlobalDataLyon, who are facing relegation to the second-tier Ligue 2 in France for domestic financial misdemeanors, will also be excluded from UEFA competitions in 2025-26 should this demotion (which they are appealing) take place.
Porto, meanwhile, have been fined €750,000 unconditionally.
In its statement on the punishments, UEFA has said that profits from "the sale of tangible or intangible assets, the exchange of players (so-called 'swaps') and the transfers of players between related parties" are not assessed as real profit by the CFCB.
Chelsea posted an on-paper profit of £128.4 million in June of last year, but UEFA has discounted the £200 million sale of the club's women's team from the former number – the team was sold to a company also run by the club's ultimate owners, BlueCo. It has also removed the sale of two hotels next to Chelsea's Stamford Bridge home stadium – again, by the club to BlueCo – from its calculations.
Meanwhile, four clubs – also including Chelsea, as well as Aston Villa, Greece's Panathinaikos, and Besiktas from Turkey – breached the squad cost ratio rule (the proportion of a club's income that gets paid out in player wages) for 2024.
The quartet reported squad cost ratios above 80%, thus breaching the regulations (it will be reduced to 70% from this year onwards).
As a result, they have all been imposed unconditional fines, with Chelsea again receiving the heaviest punishment – €11 million.
Elsewhere, three clubs – Poland's Wisla Krakow, Norway's Bodo/Glimt, and Bosnia and Herzegovina's Sarajevo – were fined for the submission of late or inaccurate financial information.
Finally, the CFCB first chamber has also continued to monitor the 10 clubs that had settlements imposed last year – this number includes major clubs such as AC Milan and Inter Milan from Italy, current UEFA Champions League champions Paris-Saint Germain, as well as Olympique de Marseille and AS Monaco (all from France).
Nine of the 10 were found to have "fulfilled the intermediate financial targets" set for the 2024 financial year, while Italy's Roma were found to have slightly exceeded that target.
As a result, Roma have been fined €3 million.
