Could UEFA financial fair play work in MLS?

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.

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.

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)

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.

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!

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.

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.

Won't MLS lose 14 of its teams if this was implemented?

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.

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.

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.