Keystone Kops: UEFA raided Bayern Munich’s offices

Bayern Munich have rarely, if ever, been involved in financial irregularities. However, UEFA wanted to be one million percent sure that the Bavarians were not involved in anything nefarious.

So, what happened? UEFA raided Säbener Straße with its inspectors (Bild via @iMiaSanMia):

CEO Jan-Christian Dreesen: Inspectors from UEFA were at Säbener recently and ‘turned the office upside down’ to check Bayern’s finances and whether the club is complying with the new UEFA financial regulations.

We recently had UEFA here, they looked at our finances for a few days in terms of sponsorship contracts, salary payments, depreciation - to prevent sponsorship deals from actually being hidden capital injections.

Photo by James Gill - Danehouse/Getty Images

You have to show them everything, it’s time-consuming and ties up a lot of resources. But I think it’s great because UEFA goes to all clubs.

I very much hope that this new (financial) system, in which we have made a massive contribution on the part of the ECA and the DFL, will work much better (than FFP). It’s also about total squad costs, agent costs and write-offs that result from transfers.

I think if there are violations, it’s only fair to have sanctions - including exclusion from UEFA competitions. If this doesn’t work, we German clubs will no longer be internationally competitive with our self-imposed rules (50+1).

It is good that UEFA is check into everything, but there are some clubs out there, who might warrant more scrutiny than Bayern Munich.