CCL Regulations Document: Penalties

This is a continuation of my series on the CONCACAF Champions League Rules and Regulations document, focusing on the disciplinary regulations and the penalties that can be applied to participating clubs and players.  These clauses can be found in Sections 3, 5, 6, 12, and 13.

If a team withdraws from the CCL by failing to participate in any match, that side will incur the following penalties, increasing in severity with the stage at which the withdrawal occurs (Sect. 3.11, 3.16):

Competition Stage	Penalty
Before Preliminary Round draw	US$5,000 + entry fees
After Preliminary Round draw, but before matches are played	US$7,500 + entry fees
Preliminary Round	US$10,000 + entry fees
Group Stage	US$15,000 + entry fees
Knockout rounds	US$20,000 + entry fees
FIFA Club World Cup	US$100,000 + FIFA fines

In addition, the withdrawn club has to reimburse the following organizations for expenses incurred, damages, and losses stemming from withdrawal (Sect. 3.14):

• The local organizing committee
• The opposing club (or clubs in the Group Stage)
• CONCACAF

And to top it off, the withdrawn club is barred from CONCACAF club competitions for the next two years that it is eligible (Sect. 6.7).

A team can incur a 0-3 penalty result for the following:

• Failing to appear at, start, or finish a match (Sect. 3.12)
• Playing a match with an ineligible player (Sect. 5.12)

If the match is abandoned, and the other team is winning by more than three goals, that result will stand instead.

The following are the penalties for players:

• Sent off in the field of play: one-match suspension, valid from the next CONCACAF club match
• Two yellow cards in separate matches: suspension from the following CCL match (the caution slate is wiped clean at the end of the Group Stage)
• Un-served penalties for red cards or yellow card accumulations are carried over to the following CCL season

There are also penalties for other infractions by players and/or club officials against the regulations, for example

• Doping (Sect. 7.1)
• Unsporting behavior (Sect. 6.2)
• Disparaging remarks about the CCL (Sect. 13.5)

There is a CONCACAF Disciplinary Committee in place to hear disciplinary cases and consider appeals, but the following decisions are not subject to appeal:

• Cautions and censures
• Suspensions of up to two matches, or up to two months
• Fines to players and club officials less than US$10,000
• Fines to national associations less than US$30,000

Protests must be submitted in writing (along with a US$500 payment to CONCACAF) under the proper time windows for the following type of protest:

• Player eligibility - no later than (NLT) 2 hours after the match conclusion
• Match incidents - immediately after the incident by the team captain, in writing to the Match Commissioner NLT 2 hours after match conclusion
• Playing surface/equipment - NLT start of match by team official

The referee's decision on the field is considered as final.

The losing party of the protest may have to pay the appeal fees, and once the champion of the CCL has been named, all existing protests are null and void.

This concludes my look at the disciplinary regulations in the CONCACAF Champions League, and this also concludes my series on the regulations document.  In a future post I'd like to look at how CONCACAF measures up -- on paper -- to the other Champions League competitions in the other confederations.

Comments

[Kal]

Hey, any particular reason why CONCACAF clubs would be more likely than clubs in other federations to drop out in the middle of a competition? Seems from the regulations like this is a problem...

[Howard Hamilton]

Club withdrawals were quite common in the bad old days of the Champions' Cup, even to the point where CONCACAF had merely awarded the title to a team because of a withdrawal or a disqualification in the latter stages. (One example is Haiti's Violette in 1984.) And withdrawals from the CFU Club Championship occur at least once or twice a year.

No team has withdrawn from the CONCACAF Champions Cup proper in a long time (I don't recall offhand), but CONCACAF is making sure that there is a powerful disincentive for clubs to withdraw from the Champions League.