Milan to accept year out of Europe?
By Football Italia staff
There are reports Milan will seek a deal with UEFA, accepting a year out of European football over FFP violations rather than play the Europa League.
The Rossoneri were originally excluded from the 2018-19 season, but won a last-minute appeal to enter the Europa League, only to crash out in the group stage.
The most recent sentence was a €12m fine, limited 21-man squad list for European competition and the exclusion from UEFA tournaments for one year if the finances aren’t balanced by 2021 - something the club feels is simply not feasible.
They have so far held off on appealing this decision at the CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sport) and there may well be a plan behind that.
With Manchester City also now facing action and UEFA eager to prove the rules are not different for the bigger clubs, Milan could have an alternative approach.
According to the Corriere della Sera newspaper, if the Rossoneri do not qualify for the Champions League with a top four finish in Serie A this season, they could accept a one-year ban by cutting a deal with UEFA.
That would mean skipping the Europa League, which they have very little interest in anyway, getting the ban out of the way and focusing all their energy on qualifying for the Champions League next season.
In turn, it'd give them more time to balance the books without resorting to massive player sales.
CorSera - Milan-UEFA, frozen the appeal to the TAS: there is an agreement between the parties
05.19.2019 08:00 by Matteo Calcagni
The absence of the Milan case was not missed on the pages of the TAS website, where the Rossoneri hearing does not appear among those scheduled until 2 July. And according to today's edition of the Corriere della Sera you won't even find them later. The time for compromise with the search for an agreement would come between the parties.
LOOKING FOR A SOLUTION - As the newspaper underlines, the complex and ambitious goal is to find a legal solution that allows Milan to have more time to reach a balanced budget, currently imposed by 2021, without distorting the principles base of the PSF and that can pass to the scrutiny of the judicial chamber (intent on applying the rules tout court, although the same UEFA leadership push for other common sense reasoning). Nor do you want to irritate the clubs that in recent years have had to comply with the settlement agreement piles, such as Inter and Roma, which could be felt in the event of agreements considered too low.
SURPRISE OF FAILURE -According to CorSera, unlike what was announced at Christmas, Milan decided not to cultivate the use of the TAS for the sanction issued by the Judicial Chamber for the sanctions of the three-year period '14 -'17, or: fine of 12 million euros, limit of 21 players in pink for the European Cups and exclusion from them if in 2021 a balanced budget (with a tolerance of -30 million) will not be reached. Judgment that Milan immediately considered too harsh, considering that the 2018 budget ended at -126 million and the next, from what it filters, is starting at a red close to 100 million. Milan has also been indicted for the three-year period 2015/2018, where it would be a repeat offender. This passage was welcomed by the club with tranquility, as the idea is to find an agreement "
THE POSSIBLE PENALTY - The crux of the matter is to understand which sanction would be deemed appropriate by Milan. There are several evaluations to be made, also based on the placement that Milan will conquer on the field: it would be one thing to skip a season in the Champions League, another to skip a year of the Europa League. Last year at the Rossoneri club it would almost be agreed to skip a season in the Europa League and then start again "clean" eliminating the other sanctions. It is not inconceivable that the same offer can be relaunched from Nyon if Milan fails to hit the Champions League. The club should then decide whether to take it or look for another kind of agreement.
