• European football

Mourinho: 'Contradictory' FFP favours established elite

Jose Mourinho believes Financial Fair Play rules prevent ambitious clubs from competing with the game's giants © Getty Images

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Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho claims UEFA's Financial Fair Play rules halt the ambitions of clubs hoping to join the established giants of European football.

Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea are among those who have tried to break the long-established stranglehold of the traditional powerhouses in England, German, Italian and Spanish football with the help of investment from overseas owners in recent years.

FFP ensures that clubs work within budgets that prevent them from running at a huge loss, with City and Chelsea among those whose transfer plans have been affected by the new rules in the last 18 months.

City - who were punished for falling foul of FFP rules earlier this year - allowed striker Alvaro Negredo to leave last summer after manager Manuel Pellegrini admitted the club needed to comply with UEFA regulations, while Chelsea's move to sell Juan Mata to Manchester United last January may also have been influenced by the same financial controls.

Now Mourinho has accused the introduction of FFP of working against Chelsea.

"I think Financial Fair Play is a contradiction because, when football decided to go for Financial Fair Play it was exactly to put teams in equal conditions to compete," he told Eurosport.

"What happened really with the Financial Fair Play is a big protection to the historical, old, big clubs, which have a financial structure, a commercial structure, everything in place based on historical success for years and years and years.

"The 'new' clubs - I call them 'new' clubs, those with new investment - they cannot put themselves quickly at the same level. Clubs with new owners cannot immediately attack the control and the domination of these big clubs.

"Chelsea is not an old, historical, huge club, but it's also not a club with a new owner. It's a club with the same owner for more than 10 years. A club with a very important history, with great stability too. And at this moment I think we are just below them. I can say we are a very good club with the ambition to be a great club."

Chelsea's Champions League success in 2012 is one of the few examples of what Mourinho would describe as a "new" team winning Europe's elite competition, with Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Manchester United among the recent winners of the competition at a time when huge investment has been ploughed into many unheralded clubs.

It remains to be seen whether Mourinho's views gather much sympathy among football supporters, with Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger, who has long been a fierce rival of the Chelsea boss, among the biggest supporters of the Financial Fair Play initiative.

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