Football
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Lyon president to back PSG's bid to have FFP regulations changed

Lyon president Jean-Michel Aulas has said he will lend the weight of his support to Paris Saint-Germain's push to get UEFA to amend financial fair play regulations.

PSG president Nasser Al Khelaifi and director general Jean-Claude Blanc will attend a meeting at the governing body's headquarters near Geneva on Monday to argue the case that the FFP rules should be altered.

The French champions and Manchester City were the most high-profile and most heavily punished clubs when UEFA announced its first wave of punishments under the new rules late last season.

PSG, who were fined and had their transfer activity and the size of their Champions League squad reduced, hope UEFA will listen to their argument that the rules merely reinforce the established elite, while blunting the ambitions of new investors, and do not take into account differences between leagues.

Aulas told media he would give his Ligue 1 rivals his backing in Switzerland.

"It's not the problem of Paris Saint-Germain. It's the problem of the difference between financial fair play and the constraints of each of the clubs," Aulas said. "There is a European rule, and other rules in each of the countries, so there has to be a move towards harmonisation."

He added: "I will be alongside the people from PSG and we are going to try and ensure that they get what they want."

The PSG hierarchy will argue that new investors should be given a period in which they can infringe FFP rules to enable them to bring their club up to standard, while they will also point out that a player costs far more to employ in France than in any of Europe's other top five leagues.

The Ligue de Football Professionnel has calculated a player earning 1.8 million euros a year costs a French club 1.39 million euros to employ, while the same player would cost a Premier League side 355,000 euros annually, and a Bundesliga club just 7,000 euros a year.

PSG are also likely to bring up the question of third-party ownership -- a practice forbidden in countries such as France and England, but permitted in Portugal.

Monaco, Roma, Besiktas, Inter Milan, Kuban Krasnodar, Liverpool and Sporting Lisbon are the next set of clubs to be investigated by UEFA and have until the end of November to show they did not exceed the 45 million-euro debt allowance imposed by FFP.

UEFA feels the move is working having reduced the cumulative debt of European clubs from 1.7 billion euros to 800 million euros in the two years since the new rules came into effect.

Nonetheless, UEFA president Michel Platini insisted the clubs' concerns would be given fair consideration.

"It was me who wanted to see where we are with this," he told L'Equipe. "I remind you that financial fair play was launched four years ago at the clubs' request. We're going to listen to them and see what they want.

"But financial fair play isn't going to change in nature. We won't modify the fundamental rules, which state clubs can't spend more money than they earn. For the rest, we're open to ideas, and we at UEFA might have a desire to change certain things around the edges."

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