Could UEFA financial fair play work in MLS?

Discussion in 'MLS: Commissioner - You be The Don' started by vevo5, Jan 22, 2012.

  1. ceezmad Member+

    Member Since:
    Mar 4, 2010
    Location:
    Chicago
    Club:
    Chicago Red Stars
    Country:
    United States
    Well he did not really mean small teams; I guess he meant to say the slightly less huge teams would have a chance to become huge teams.
          
  2. triplet1 BigSoccer Supporter

    Member Since:
    Jul 25, 2006
    Location:
    Stuck in the Middle
    This perhaps more than most.

    Again, FFP isn't intended to make small clubs more competitive, it's intended to keep clubs from spending more than they have. There's no evidence that MLS teams are spending themselves into oblivion, but even if they were the league has tools to deal with it -- it can limit player spending and move revenue around and share it. I would argue those are better, more direct ways to solve the problem.

    In other words, I don't think the OP was concerned about the solvency of MLS teams.

    As suggested earlier, this really seems a stalking horse for either an unbalanced cap or no cap at all -- it's an argument to let teams spend what they wish, as long as they don't go broke doing it IMO.
  3. xtomx Member

    Member Since:
    Sep 6, 2001
    Location:
    Chicago
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Sorry about the length of this post.

    You say "holding some MLS clubs back."
    Others say, "creating parity, a (relatively) equal playing field."

    It is a question of perspective and enforcing stability on the market place.

    There are many theories about this. I list the below for example purposes only:
    a) unfettered capitalism (like NASL and, traditionally, much of Europe)-some big/rich teams do well, the rest do not.
    b) a single entity (like MLS)-stability by pooling resources, but may hold "some MLS clubs back" as you state, since it stifles the marketplace.
    c) revenue sharing without a "real" cap (like MLB)-big clubs can spend almost at will, but have to share with smaller clubs
    d) a soft salary cap (like NBA)-allows for some controls, but with numerous loopholes and potential penalties for exceeding the "cap" in certain ways
    e) hard salary cap (like NFL has traditionally had)-creates "equality" by allowing every team to spend up to a set amount and no more.

    I could go on, but won't. These formulae are ever developing.


    Also, this has been argued over and over, but let's get this straight, NASL was NOT "extremely successful".

    I was a huge Chicago Sting fan during NASL, and watched as many games as possible and went to as many as I could, but NASL was not extremely successful.

    There was not one year that had stabiity. In 17 seasons, there were a total of34 teams, including teams that moved and renamed up to 4 times.

    There was not one team, not one, that existed for the entire 17 seasons. The closest was the Dallas Tornados (1968-1981). The Sting, the Cosmos, the Aztecs, the Tampa Bay Rowdies, the Sounders and the Whitecaps had decent runs, but no team lasted all 17 seasons.

    North American Soccer League
    Year Teams
    1968 17 teams
    1969 5 teams
    1970 6 teams
    1971 8 teams
    1972 8 teams
    1973 9 teams
    1974 15 teams
    1975 20 teams
    1976 20 teams
    1977 18 teams
    1978 24 teams
    1979 24 teams
    1980 24 teams
    1981 21 teams
    1982 14 teams
    1983 12 teams
    1984 9 teams

    Average attendance
    1968: 4,747
    1969: 4,699
    1970: 2,930
    1971: 3,163
    1972: 4,159
    1973: 4,780
    1974: 5,954
    1975: 7,770
    1976: 7,642
    1977: 10,295
    1978: 13,558
    1979: 13,084
    1980: 14,201
    1981: 14,084
    1982: 13,155
    1983: 13,258
    1984: 10,759

    And those 1977-83 years were the years skewed by the Cosmos' success
    (Cosmos attendance
    1977 34,142
    1978 47,856
    1979 46,690
    1980 42,754
    1981 34,835
    1982 28,479
    1983 27,242
    when the Cosmos were "extremely successful" but not the league).

    http://homepages.sover.net/~spectrum/
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Soccer_League_(1968–1984)
  4. xtomx Member

    Member Since:
    Sep 6, 2001
    Location:
    Chicago
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Another poster already brought the inherent inequality between big clubs/big markets and smaller ones, but I want to add a more practical problem with your proposal.

    How would they get rid of it, once it was started? The disparity would be so great that the big clubs would fight to maintain the (inequal) status quo and the smaller clubs would most likely be powerless to enforce it.

    You could try it on a contract basis, that is, draft a contract that runs for, say, 20 years, with the terms in the first ten years be as you state and the the hard cap for the second 20.

    The problem is that contacts can be modified in so many different ways as to render this option almost meaningless.

    As an attorney who deals with contract law everyday, I see this frequently.
  5. laasan Member

    Member Since:
    Apr 12, 2010
    completely besides the point. the point is that in a football landscape like you have in Europe, to say you cap the possible candidates for a continental title to something like 30 would be an incredibly unfair thing to do. to seriously suggest this as a solution to the far from perfect money distribution system in European football is just utterly ignorant and idiotic. I don't want to pretend there are no issues to solve, there are, but certainly not by restricting access to a selected elite. that'd be madness!
  6. DoctorD Member+

    Member Since:
    Sep 29, 2002
    Location:
    MidAtlantic
    Club:
    Philadelphia Union
    Country:
    United States
    And you are right. For a European audience, capping the potential victors to 30 would be politically unfeasible at this time. Americans, IMHO, have a much better understanding and ability of balancing small and large entities in a competitive landscape. So the OPs premise is incorrect: what might work in Europe should not be applied to the US.

    But as an American, I can't help but notice that the pool of potential European champions is de facto pretty small, even if theoretically large. I also can't help but notice that European attempts at organizations that contain both large and small members, such as the Euro zone and FIFA itself, fail miserably.
  7. themightymagyar Member

    Member Since:
    Aug 25, 2009
    Location:
    Indianapolis
    Country:
    United States
    Why would we even want this? Our financial system is much better. We don't need to copy Europe on everything expletive thing they do. Forget about Europe, concentrate on America.
  8. nlsanand Member

    Member Since:
    May 31, 2007
    Location:
    Toronto
    Club:
    Toronto FC
    Country:
    Canada
    Won't MLS lose 14 of its teams if this was implemented?
  9. lurak Member

    Member Since:
    Aug 24, 2007
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    I'm not even sold that UEFA Financial Fair Play will fix UEFA's issues. Besides, MLS is doing fine with the system they have.
  10. johan neeskens Member

    Member Since:
    Jan 14, 2004
    Forgive me for interfering but there is no such thing as a standardised European football system. In countries like the Netherlands and Germany you can actually be chucked out of the league for being in debt for less than half a million. By contrast you can be perpetually in debt for half a billion or even more in Spain and England and win the CL and be applauded for it, if you'll forgive me for saying this, by American football fans. My point being that the financial adminstration rules one European football league has is very different from the next, which goes a long way towards explaining why the two top leagues in the CL account for the vast bulk of debt in European football. Football is not seen as a normal industry in Europe. If it was, the European Union's fair competition committee would slaughter it, and the Barcelonas of this world would have a very hard time indeed.

    The situation in European football now is, the leagues that allow clubs to be badly managed financially, at the same time have the most success in European football. Platini says he wants to change this situation, but as a European football supporter I have strong doubts about this. I guess the question American football supporters have to ask themselves is, do you want a fair playing field, or do you want to emulate European football.
  11. triplet1 BigSoccer Supporter

    Member Since:
    Jul 25, 2006
    Location:
    Stuck in the Middle
    I agree.

    Uefa turned to what is now called FFP only after it concluded a salary cap wasn't leagally possible, as the Guardian explains:

    Link:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/jan/25/uefa-financial-fair-play-rules


    A salary cap wasn't possible for Uefa, but for MLS it is.

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