Time for a salary cap?

Des wrote: »

Woah, hang on a minute here.

Nurses and teachers have nothing to do with it.

Anyway, if the moany feckers wanted more money they could go to private schools and hospitals. It's not as if they didn't know the wages they were going to be paid, the hours they do, and the stress of the job before they went training for it.

Why don't they have anything to do with it? I'm sure the footballers value the contribution they get from the nurses who treat them when injured or the teachers who school their kids for them. Ask yourself if the wages these people are receiving are fair? I would say no.

DesF wrote:

It's nothing to do with "greed is good", it's about workers saying to their employers that "another company is offering x,000 more than you are for the same work, now match it, or I'm off". It's the free market.

Answer me this. If, in your line of work, a big foreign company arrived on the scene, called you and said "hey dude, we'll offer you double the money to come work for us" what would you do? Answer honestly please.

Now, why should footballers be different?

I would have to factor in a number of things. Would leaving sit well with my conscience? Would I be leaving anyone high and dry? Is this something that is going to bring me happiness or am I being swayed by purely financial means? I would factor these things in to the equation and that is being honest.

I think footballers do have a right to earn as much as they can but the issue is whether or not ther should be a cap on the amount possible. I would favour this. Let me give you an example.

Friday Night with Jonathan Ross is a show I enjoy watching but the money he gets to front it is obscene in my opinion and I understand why many British people are angry about it. Ross himself has the right to earn what he wants but perhaps the BBC should be restricted in what they can offer big names.

DesF wrote:

What do you mean IF this is the way football is going?

IF? IF?

It went this way when the wage cap was scrapped.

You are right but perhaps it's time to close Pandora's Box so to speak.

A couple of points:

You cannot compare US sports to European soccer in any way, as they are completely different animals in every way, from markets to demographics to talent pools. Their salary cap system is irrelevant to Euro soccer. It's slightly OT, but if you want further explanation I'll post here.

Football is and has been firstly a business for well over a decade, if not longer. The sporting roots of the clubs corporations have all but disappeared, and football clubs have now become the billionaire's plaything. Anyone who yearns for the bygone days of Ronnie Radford et al, they're probably gone for good.

It's a free market, and in the current climate, you cannot blame a player for negotiating as much as he can to get the best deal possible. Most players are finished by their early thirties, and on average they've another forty to fifty years ahead of them, so getting the €£$ now it perfectly understandable.

Is it possible that the current situation cannot sustain itself? Absolutely yes, there is a real chance the the arsé will fall out of the business sometime, and the coin will move onto the next fad and people will have to pick up the pieces. But you cannot criticise the moneymen and CEOs for their motives, when everyone, including players and fans, are complicit in this business.

As Des said, you'll always get the 15-20k diehards who'll follow the team, but that's not where the money is being generated. The fair weather fans are generating most of the revenue for the businesses, the tourists who take in a game while in London or Manchester, the commuters from the continent and Ireland who pop over every couple of months and have a lot of disposable income in their pockets. It's exactly the same in golf; a lot of US fans are gobsh1tes who follow Tiger Woods every weekend, but haven't turned on the television since he had his operation, and they are the guys buying the expensive clubs and apparel and making enormous financial contributions to the industry.

You cannot go and spend €70 on a jersey, and then turn around and criticise players, managers and owners for investing huge sums of cash in transfers. Everyone has contributed in creating the monster, and then everyone has to generate the cash to feed it. It's a standalone industry now.

themont85 wrote: »

Salary Cap is the best way forward, not one on individual earnings but on the team as a whole. It introduces a completely different level to the sport. In the NFL the draft like a football teams acadamy is the most important thing in winning. It will force teams to be smarter with their resources. All the best teams in english football past were built on there youth structure up from the Busby Babes to United's great youth players of the 90s to even Arsenal recently. But models like Arsenal/Man Utd are dying out, Chelsea have proven that.

In the US you have two teams max per city playing in any particular major sport.
These teams have huge audiences, some have a whole state behind them or even more than a whole state. Each state is the the equivalent of a small European Country.

We already have experienced a top four in England for a number of years now. I don't see where you are coming from saying that if it continues that there will only be a few teams at the top and all the rest struggling. Its already the case.

As far as a Salary Cap is concerned I'd love to see it happen and you are right that it would be great for the game. At club level you would see a lot of teams being able to compete again. On a National level you would have a lot more homegrown talent as clubs would have to spend much more money on their youth systems.
The problem is that the big clubs already control European soccer and they are now huge companies so its not going to happen.
At the first serious mention of this the G14 clubs would be threatening to breakaway and form their own super league again.

salary caps won't work as clubs can simply inflate bonuses or find a way around it...

what will work is forcing a club to field 'x' number of home players or at least have them in a squad. I'd suggest 5 per match squad.

that way, it encourages clubs to plough cash in to youth academies rather than established foreign superstars.

NekkidBibleMan wrote: »

At the end of the day, most footballers will be happy to play football for the typical professional salary - the only reason they're earning such obscene amounts is because the game is so awash with money.

FIFA should set a per-player salary cap, and set it low. Players may rediscover their love for the game and realize that it is a privilege to line out in front of millions of adoring fans, not a grueling task that requires ridiculous compensation.

It would also curtail players angling for moves to clubs offering higher wages, a la Flamini, Adebayour, Ronaldo and company.

If FIFA could reduce salaries & transfer fees, the money could be pumped into grassroots football and be put to use to offer the fan better value for money.

Again I agree with your sentiments here. The big problem is that FIFA don't have the power in European club soccer, they abide by the wishes of the G14.

Neil3030 wrote: »

Des,

Salary caps are most effective when calculated on the mean earnings of all clubs in the league, not individual caps for each specific club based on their earnings. As you say, this figure would be far too easily manipulated by introducing capital.

I have absolutely no problem with players earning whatever clubs are willing to pay them. I have a serious problem with billionaire playboys swanning in and subordinating management, development and tactics with their piles and piles of cash.

I think the salary cap, if calculated appropriately to each specific league, is a good idea as it both restricts and protects all types of players. Mercenaries can still get their high wages if they so wish, but they will have to join a club that has a lot of cap room, which means they probably won't be playing with a very strong team. On the other hand, players who are motivated by pride and the desire to be champions will have to forfeit a chunk of their paycheck in order to get onto a team with players capable of mounting title challenges (but let's be honest, they'll still make a damn good living in the process). And then on the...eh... other other hand, youth players will receive more developmental attention as their value to teams increase under economic restrictions, meaning the standard of the overall playing pool increases for future generations.

By the way, this system still enshrines the principles of a free market, as players are free to choose which path they take - money or success. What the cap eliminates is the scenario that we are very likely to be facing quite soon, where massive injections of wealth at a small number of clubs will result in a handful of preposterously talented teams, with the rest of the world struggling to make up the numbers. We may be close to that scenario now, but it could get much much worse.

The salary cap doesn’t take power from players, it takes (a certain degree of) power from monetary influence in team success and restores power back to managers and tactics, which, unlike cash, are core virtues of the sport. As I've said before, in order for the idea to work FIFA need to introduce it at all levels, in all leagues and in all countries – that will create a network of monopolies vital to the idea’s success.

The cap scenario you explain wouldn't work for several important reasons, but most crucially because even if the salary cap for each team is equal the teams certainly aren't. The poorer clubs would demand that the cap figure be something they could afford, so it could be as low as £20m compared to 6 times that that Chelsea currently spend. So successful teams couldn't reward their players with more pay no matter how much the club earns or the team wins. Teams would be forced to sell older more expensive players and field teams with 2-3 real stars and a handful of journeymen to fill out the gaps. The owners would make a fortune, imagine a situation where a team wins the FA Cup, Premier League and Champions League in the same season, playing 30+ home games and yet the players get the same as the bottom team that were relegated and didn't play in Europe. The owners of the big clubs would pocket millions in gate money and merchandising revenue and pay just a small fraction to the players.

TV audiences pay millions to see the big teams with the star players, the salary cap as you explain it would spread these star players across the whole league, so the champions league would lose its appeal too, as the top teams wouldn't be able to afford more than 2-3 top players.


The salary cap is a seemingly simple solution to a complex problem and we know from our politicians, just how effective simple solutions can be and how they can have disastrous consequences afterwards.

Neil3030 wrote: »

Yes it will be a more complicated system than in the US, but for christ’s sake we’re smarter than them and it’s time we started acting like it.

The NFL Salary Cap in American Football started in the 1994 season and it is based on a percentage of league revenue. I'm not sure we are smarter than them, their salary cap was intended to create parity between the (now) 32 teams in the league. Since it was introduced, 10 different teams have won the Superbowl and 8 other different teams have reached the Superbowl, so 18 different teams have finished in the top 2. The parity it helped create has seen supporter interest soar, tv revenue and attendances are at an all time high and as a result the salary cap has trebled since it was introduced. However, their success in creating competitive parity is also partly due to the college draft in which the team with the worst record each year, gets the first pick of the new young players coming out of American colleges and as virtually all NFL players come through the college football system, the means that the worst teams get the first choice of the cream of the young upcoming players. Soccer cannot replicate this system for distributing new players, so even with a salary cap, parity will be much harder to achieve.

I vote yes coz in the world of billioners football becomes nonsence,its all about money and who will offer more,what chance will have other smaller clubs if football world will hold 15-20 ultra rich clubs and compete who will buy player for more money,its ridiculous,just look at new owners of City and what are they planning....