Juventus has been suspended from European competitions for a year by UEFA for violating club licenses and Financial Fair Play (FFP).
The Italian club has also been fined €20 million, although €10 million of that is conditional and will only be imposed if there are irregularities in Juventus’ financial statements for 2023, 2024 or 2025.
The suspension means that Juventus will not participate in the 2023-24 Europa Conference League and will likely be replaced by Fiorentina, who finished eighth in Serie A last season. The Italian FA (FIGC) must submit an entry form for the next club in the Serie A standings, which will be confirmed by UEFA in due course.
The ban also moves Aston Villa from the unseeded to the seeded pot for the August two-legged play-offs.
UEFA said Juventus “breached UEFA’s regulatory framework and violated the settlement agreement signed in August 2022”, leading to their punishment.
UEFA opened a formal investigation into Juventus’ alleged financial violations in December.
The study looked at income from player registration fees between 2019 and 2021.
UEFA’s Finance Department (CFCB) had previously reached a settlement with the club based on submitted information relating to the financial years ending in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022. This acknowledged Juventus’ “failure to meet the break- even-requirement” around FFP, but took into account the impact of the pandemic on the clubs’ finances.
But European football’s governing body confirmed in December that the CFCB investigation would focus on “alleged financial violations”, stressed by the prosecutor, saying it reserves the right to terminate the three-year transitional agreement “if new and substantial facts come to light”.
Juventus has already faced sanctions this year for alleged financial malpractice, having received an initial 15-point penalty in January in Serie A, which was suspended and then reduced to a 10-point penalty in May by the Federal Football Association (FIGC) of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC). Court of Appeal in a case about too high trading income of players. This dropped them out of the Champions League places and finished seventh.
In May, the club accepted a €718,000 fine as part of a plea with the FIGC that ended Italy’s sporting fines for financial malpractice.
The May case involved the adjudication of a second separate sports case, prompted by a criminal investigation known as Prisma, which raised allegations of false accounting, false financial statements and market manipulation.
Juventus have always denied any wrongdoing and have maintained that they acted in accordance with the law and accounting principles and in line with the practice of the international football industry and market conditions.
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