How American Football could help the English Premiership.

Neil3030

The thread about Chelsea beating the 100 point mark has raised some points regarding the difference in quality between the top four or five clubs in England and the best of the rest. The NFL has a few procedures in place to try prevent the occurance of dynasties. Regardless of your opinion of the sport, I think youll agree that a few of these ideas would really help the EPL become a lot more competitive:

The Salary Cap:
At the moment, no team in the NFL can exceed $80.5m/year on wages. Now while this may seem like a lok of money, you have to remember that each team has at least 25 starting players, seeing as there are seperate offense and defense teams and special teams (kick-offs, punts). So that averages out at around $3.22m/year per player or about $60000 per week, spread over the year. Ok, so $60000 per player would still allow you to build a damn good team in soccer, but seeing as it only has 11 starters, that compares to an average of only $26000 per week and if you want to take currency into consideration, that translates to around £13000 per week.

This system stops anyone (like Roman A) from coming in and simply splashing cash around and building a championship calibre squad.

As well as that, each year's cap is calculated some way around the average revenue of each team in the league for the previous year, so it doesn't allow for an enourmous cap that would be of no hinderence to wealthy clubs, and no relevence to poor clubs.

The Draft:
This idea is not quite as easily transferrable to soccer as the cap would be, but here's the basic idea:

All novice players* entering into the NFL must be selected from the Draft, and the worst team from the previous year, gets first pick the next year. So let's assume Norwich go ahead and finish last this year, then they can pick the best unsigned player to strengthen their squad.

Now this would be very tough to introduce to soccer, but it's a very solid way to keep a league competitive.

For starters, the NFL has a rule that you have to wait 3 years from High-School Graduation before playing pro, so most players go play in college, and scouts and whatnot can watch them there. I'm not aware of any age restrictions in soccer leagues, maybe someone could clarify that, but ultimately players sign with clubs youth systems. That could be an idea, that you must go through a draft if you want to play with a first-team, but it'd be hard to see a club bothered developing a player, if they know that once he's good enough, another team will pick him. Ultimately you'd need all young players to play in a seperate league or something (like college football for the NFL)

Anyhoo, there's two ways in which the NFL is keeping things competative. To give you some idea, the Patriots won the superbowl this year for the third time in 4 years and everyone in the league is acknowledging that this is a phenomenal achievement given league rules. Now would anyone say the same thing if Chelsea remain in Romans wallet and go on and win the league 3 times in the next 4 years? I wouldn't say so anyway.

Neil3030

*There are some loopholes that allow players to enter and not through the Draft, but I'm not entirely certain of their specifics.

leeroybrown

The Salary Cap:

The salary cap works in the NFL for the simple reason this it is 'American Football'. The best teams in the NFL don't play in a continental competition such as the Champions League and have to compete for players. I don't see there being a UEFA-wide salary cap any time soon so any form of salary cap would only serve to disadvantage the Premier League, even if it does even the league up a bit.

Also, limiting a players salary to a set figure per week is all fine and well in theory but it would probably be easy to circumvent using various royalty, commercial and image rights contracts for major players. Ultimately it could end up being just as bad and less transparent.

It's slightly ironic that we've come full circle from scrapping the wage cap as it left players on meagre sums of old to considering introducing one as players wages are crippling and unbalancing the sport.

The Draft:

Without considering any of the possible plus sides of the draft, which I believe is a poor system that is hugely open to abuse, you have to bear in mind that it probably tramples on so much EU employment legislation that the meer utterance of the term would be bad.

Big Ears

bad idea that would be impossible to execute .

Neil3030

Uefa couldn't bring in a cap is suppose, given that mercinaries (sp??) would just naf off to the middle east or something. But would it be too much to request something from Fifa?

PHB

While the salary cap might be cool, the draft isn't possible in Football.


NFL works like this:
You play in high school.
You can either go to a draft right then and there
Or go to a college team, then go onto to the draft.

The devlopment happens in high school college and early years of team.

Football:
You play soccer, you pretty much leave school at 16 or earlier, and join a club which develops you up.
There is no stages like in NFL, does no oppurtunies for drafts.
To implement this you would need to either create communial training centres in every country in europe, or you would have tomake schoools and colleges put high emphasises into soccer.

Either way, it would require huge huge huge changes, which won't ever happen, and tbh I like the devloping of players by clubs. I love the fact that Giggs has been at United since he was like 2 or something.

Salary cap would be cool, but salaries aren't everything, and you'd still be able to splash the cash in buying players.
NFL uses trading systems and there isn't much cash being splashed about, to do this system you'd also have to implement that, which isn;t going to happen.

Anyway, while it might be kinda cool, its a very different system, there are a hell of a lot less teams, and imo the quality of players wouldn't be as good.

Chucky the tree

as far as i know you can draft straight from high-school, or if you can its near impossible to be good enough.

Neil3030

You have to wait 3 years from graduation, as far as I know.

DapperGent

While the American style draft and salary cap is probably unworkable something needs to be done I think.

I would really like to see at least half the money earned by league participants in the champion's league and UEFA Cup to be spread around all the teams in their home league. The situation in the Premiership and elsewhere with a viscous circle of a few teams getting CL cash and then having more money to improve their squad and so being the only ones who ever qualify for the CL is pretty bad. Something like Rosenborg in Norway is disastrous.

abccormac

I think a salary cap is a good idea, but bringing in a draft system would be an enormous cange, and I can't see it happening. Also there is no promotion or relegation, afaik, in the NFL which is another major reason why they have a more competitive league. If you consistently finish near the bottom you will always get an early pick in the draft, and, unless your scouts are totally incompetent, build up a reasonable squad of players.

Johnny_the_fox

a draft sytem is used by the MLS (Major League Soccer) already.

wiki

MrJoeSoap

Would be interesting to see but will most likely never happen.

cruiserweight

AFAIK the G14 already has a salary cap of sorts agread between themselves, although it is more of a gentlemans agreement! No club is allowed spend over a certain percentage of it's income on wages, but I think this is as more of a precaution against going bankrupt than anything else!