Potential Everton owner slams Premier League: John Textor has blasted the Premier League’s financial fair play rules during takeover talks to buy out Farhad Moshiri at Everton.
Textor is currently in exclusive discussions to buy Moshiri’s majority stake in Everton in a move which would see him relinquish his 45 per cent share in Crystal Palace. The American businessman is following in the footsteps of the Kaminski Group, MSP Capital, 777 Partners and the Friedkin Group in trying to buy Everton.
The 58-year-old already owns Lyon in France, Botafogo in Brazil and Molenbeek in Belgium and wants to add Everton to the collection. Everton were docked eight points during the 2023/24 season due to financial fair play breaches – and Textor’s opinion on the rules will chime with many of the club’s fans.
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“Let’s start with a definition of financial fair play. That is not a word that people should be throwing around without maintaining consistency with that phrase around the rest of the globe because it sounds like such an obvious thing financial fair play,” he told ESPN Brazil. “Everyone would want fair play. That’s not what the expression means in Europe.
“The term financial fair play is a fraud. The reason it’s a fraud is that it’s not fair at all. It says that teams can only spend 75 per cent of their revenues on player salaries and it’s a rule, in Europe, that is designed to allow the big teams with their global brands – Liverpool, Manchester United – they just get to spend more money. It’s not fair at all.
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“Crystal Palace has to play against Manchester United and Manchester United is allowed to just spend more on the players. No salary cap, no parity financially, it is not financial fair play, it’s unfair.”
He added: “In the Premier League in England you have small clubs that are owned by mega billionaires, they have plenty of money but they’re not allowed to spend it. Only the big clubs with the big, global revenues are allowed to spend them.
“So it’s not about financial sustainability, or the health of a club. It’s an unfair practice with a brand that calls it financial fair play and it’s designed to allow the hegemony, the dominant clubs to always be dominant.”
The Premier League’s FFP rules allows clubs to lose a maximum of £105million over three years, which Everton and Nottingham Forest have fallen foul of. The league is now trialling new regulations, based on UEFA’s system, which will cap spending at 70 per cent of club revenue from the 2025/26 campaign.
Premier League chief executive Richard Masters defended the rules before the start of the season. “I accept it’s created frustration and a lack of clarity at times, but we have to do our jobs and the way the system works is that when we believe a breach has taken place, we obviously publicly announce that,” he said. “It’s then heard by an independent panel. They are in charge of the timing of that process.”
