Batman
Team Doctor
- Joined
- Jun 16, 2016
- Messages
- 1,817
- Reaction score
- 400
- Fav. Players
- Nesta, Inzaghi, Gattuso, Kaka, T. Silva, Romagnoli, Maldini
Well the settlement agreement is sort of a penalty each club has to agree individualy with UEFA in order to avoid to be excluded from international competition despite not meeting the FFP-rules.
As an absolute-non-expert I'd put it in those words: With the Voluntary Agreement a club avoids any punishments or regulations, in return they voluntarily accept some very strict regulations. It's the club who makes the 1st step if you want so. Until this date I think there hasn't been one club who presented a Voluntary Agreement, ACM is the 1st club as far as I know. That's also the reason why no one really knows what the UEFA really expects from a club before accepting. We would be precedent, that's why UEFA is valuating everything very carefully.
On the other hand, with the settlement agreement the club will be punished for not meeting the FFP-rules. However, the punishment is not as hard as for example being excluded from international competitions or transfer-embargos or stuff like that. However the regulations the club has to meet in the next few years is even stricter than with the Voluntary Agreement, it can also include a heavy penalty and a limited squad for those international competitions (f.e. 21 instead of 25 players), or/and that they must include more players from the own youth-academies than the other clubs (I think Man City once had to do so but I don't remember exactely).
Here you can see some examples of those settlement agreements. You'll see they are harsh, but not neck-breaking and that it's absolutely possible to go through this.
Thank you so much, that's very informative