Rules forcing European soccer clubs to cut their financial losses will make it harder for smaller teams to challenge the game's elite, Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck said on Thursday.
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Chelsea have won the English Premier League three times in the past decade after billionaire Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich bought the club and funded heavy spending on players.
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Buck said Chelsea would comply with Uefa's Financial Fair Play rules designed to curb losses but felt the measures went further than necessary to stabilise club finances.
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"We had a broken finger and we cut off the arm," Buck told the Leaders in Football conference at the club's Stamford Bridge stadium in London.
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Buck said the system would make it harder for someone like Abramovich to come in and transform a club.
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"It (FFP) goes a long way towards preserving the status quo," he added, noting that it risked killing the dreams that clubs at the bottom of the game had of reaching the top.