Schalke demands salary cap for the Bundesliga

Good idea!

 

Its a silly idea, especially considering where it comes from. Schalke is simply trying to level the playing field to save themselves from their inevitable slip down the table into financial ruin.

League's with salary caps can only work (in my opinion) if you have a draft system, in which new players are selected from a pool of new professionals (like in American sports) the youth system structure of german and European structure is simply not conducive to a salary cap system.

 

I totally agree with WBY.

Schalke brought themself into that shitty situation with their megalomania.
I remember they bid our players like Ernst, Ailton and Krstajic more than 50% higher wages than they got at us. And now they demand a salary cap.

One might argue, player wages are in no comparison with normal workers salaries. True without a doubt, but that will also not be changed with a salary cap. There is too much money in the football business and so a salary cap is only a populistic demand IMHO. That it comes from Schalke is amusing.

 

Ausgerechnet Schalke...

It seems like Schalke is more or less bankrupt, that the situation is far worse than first imagined. According to Süddeutsche Zeitung, the club is generating a net loss of €20-30m a year these days. That may explain their demand for a salary cap, it's probably more of a panic reaction out necessity than a populist demand. They may really need a salary cap to survive...

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/sport/983/491352/text/


Their own damn fault, as EE already explained. The only way for them to learn from this mess and change their policy is to go through the same hell as Dortmund did before them. I hope that the right choices and decisions are made in the coming months, because I want them to keep their licence and become a solid Bundesliga club again in the long run. The Bundesliga needs big clubs like Schalke 04, and their passionate fans deserve better management than the idiots running the club these days (and before that).

 

I really don't understand how they are generating that kind of loss. They pack the stadium every week. That's some serious mismanagement.

 

Nein!!!!!!!

 

My Two Cents(Or Whatever the Going Rate Is)

This looks like a case of the Schalke leadership(if you can call it that)trying to get the higher authorities to save them(S04)from themselves. They obviously don't believe in taking responsibility for their own actions. This club seems to have a history of making up rules to suit its own interests. The Bundesliga, or DFB, or whatever, should show a backbone and give a big thumbs down to this whole salary cap notion.

Also, where does Schalke come off demanding a salary cap or anything else? It's fine if the club wants to make a suggestion along those lines but to make demands of any sort surely is arrogance carried to the extreme. It's a good way to become unpopular and to get oneself ignored.

 

Schalke History Revisited

This scenario reminds me of the Schalke situation in 1986-87. That club went into debt by something like 8 million deutschmarks and had to sell several stars(Wegmann, Klaus Taeuber, Kleppinger, Dierssen, Roth, etc.)in 1987 and let go of more(Schumacher, Hannes, Schipper, Jakobs, Kruse, Thon, and others)upon getting relegated in 1988. In all fairness that should happen again where the club gets so deep in debt that it is forced to sell many or all of its top players and replace them with amateurs then see firsthand how the other half(that is, the Bundesliga's have not clubs)has to live.

I just wonder how deep Schalke's debt really is, and what the 1986-87 equivalent in deutschmarks is.

 

Well, don't shoot the messenger and all. Schalke may be self-interested (but those who oppose them are as well, so no problem here) - but a salary cap would be awesome for the Bundesliga (not so much for those of you who care about the European cups I admit, but I'm willing to sacrifice success in there in a heartbeat in exchange for a cap).

 

One thing to keep in mind is, that this is not a hard cap like in the US leagues. The clubs' turnover should only be used for salaries up to a certain percentage (60 oder 70%). It does nothing to improve the competitiveness of smaller, poorer teams but is only useful in restricting the influence of a sudden high cash influx (f.e. by an investor or by going public) and maybe avoiding developments like in Dortmund and probably Schalke nowadays.

Even though the salaries in Schalke (max. 40-60mios) hardly ever reached 60% of the turnover (110-140mio), so I don't know if this would help much in this case.

 

Sure, it's far from what I'd call an ideal solution, but better than nothing. I hope for more and more clubs getting interested in a hard cap, though - being outspend by Hoffenheim and Wolfsburg might do the trick.

 

In Schalke's defense, the club's demands are made in the context of the discussion about amending the 50+1 rule, i.e., that no outside investor may own a controlling stake in a German club.

Schalke fears, and reasonably so, that a German club could be purchased by a wealth sugar daddy (foreign or domestic) who'd then pump Abramovich-style wealth into the club, thus skewing the league's competitive balance.

In this context, Schalke's demands don't seem too self-serving, especially when one compares the Bundesliga to, say, the English Premier League. Investor wealth has created super clubs in England, while the Bundesliga, in contrast, remains relatively open and competitive.

 

You don't think so?

Sport1 reports: "Das Schreiben ist laut Schalke eine Reaktion auf die von Hannovers Präsident Martin Kind beantragte Abschaffung der Investorenregel in der Bundesliga, wonach der Stammverein mindestens 50 Prozent plus eine Stimme an den Lizenzspielerabteilungen der Klubs halten muss."