A lawyer taking legal action over Financial Fair Play rules has invited Manchester City fans to join his fight against UEFA after the Blues had a £49m cap enforced on their net spend.
City had to submit their Champions League squad this week, just part of the punishment imposed on them by UEFA for a breach of FFP.
Manchester Evening News quotes lawyer Jean-Louis Dupont as saying: "If some fans, as consumers of the end product of football, want to join the action in progress they are free to do so. That would hearten undoubtedly supporters who have already joined by the legal process.
"The UEFA rule is, in terms of European competition law, an anticompetitive agreement since it prohibits a club owner to invest his or her own money in strengthening its workforce, the players. It is therefore a restriction of investments, which is deemed to be a major 'crime' in competition law.
"This has the effect, on the one hand, to fossilise the current position of clubs. It is not possible any more for an average club to be bought by an ambitious investor who, having taken a financial risk for a few years, enables it to become a club at a higher level, thus ensure that the existing elite become the elite ad infinitum."
A Brussels court is due to deliver an initial decision on whether FFP breaks any laws in April 2015.
Phil Archbold
