AC Milan banned from Europa League next season

The Court of Arbitration for Sport(CAS) has banned AC Milan from taking part in the 2019/20 Europa League after breaching Financial Fair Play rules.

CAS announced the decision, saying that the Italian club has agreed to balance their books before competing in European competition again.

CAS issued a statement confirming they have accepted an agreement between the two parties due to Milan’s previous breaches of FFP regulations.

Torino would now join Roma to represent Serie A in the second level UEFA league.

A ruling by UEFA’s Adjudicatory Chamber of the Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) in December 2018 stated the Serie A giants would be excluded from participating in European club competitions if they breached the rules again before June 2021.

If they were unable to be break-even compliant, Milan would have been excluded for the next UEFA club competition they qualified for in either the 2022-23 or 2023-24 seasons.

UEFA initially found the Italian giants, who had qualified for the Europa League next season, guilty in June last year of violating financial rules which broadly limit club expenditure to club income in any given year.

However, CAS referred the matter back to UEFA judging that an European ban was disproportionate.

The Serie A giants, who missed out on a Champions League spot by one point to city rivals Inter, are one of several clubs, including Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City, to have been investigated for breaching UEFA’s rules, whereby clubs cannot spend more than they generate by their own means.

AC Milan fell foul of UEFA’s financial rules since they spent 200 million euros ($225 million) on transfers in the summer of 2017.

The club insist however that their finances should improve under American hedge fund Elliott Management Corporation, who took control last summer when former Chinese owner Li Yonghong defaulted on the loan he had taken to buy the club in 2017 from former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.