Where would the players come from? We don't have a college system like America. As for a salary cap, I can think of the following benefits: 1. Lower ticket prices. 2. Teams in less debt. 3. More money for stadium renovations, youth system, etc. 4. More competition as the best players don't all congregate to the top clubs. Downsides: 1. Legal issues 2. No other downsides.
Let others deal with this. Being an american I think I can enlighten you to some of the issues Europeans never consider since they only see these salary cap leagues from the outside looking in and never get the chance to live with these leagues day to day. Nonesense. Like most high end luxury products on the market they are priced accroding to what people will pay not according to what thye cost to produce. If people have demonstrated a willingness to pay x amount of dollars for a ticket why would a smart team charge x-y for a ticket? Possibly. But do you think maybe smart underhanded teams that are accustomed to being on top and value trophies more than profits might find ways to funnel money to players outside of the cap system? Say through payments to agents which are legal and largely unregulated or just good old fashioned suitcases filled with cash sent to relatives and friend of certain players and eventually end up in the players pockets. Remember the team owners in american sports are in it for the money first if the teams are mediocre and never compete its not a big deal (they feel this way mainly because there is no penalty for failure they can't get relegated). As a result they have no incentive to funnel extra money to players. Euro teams have a strong incentive to spend every dollar they can on players and are more inclined to deal with smaller margins to ahcieve success. Salary caps in the US are about enforcing fiscal discipline on your fellow team owners so that one rogue team owner can't on his own decide for himself that he values winning more than trophies and is willing to spend more on players to win. Rogue team owners like this in the USA force other team owners to increase their financial commitment in order to be more competitive and the result is thinner margins for everyone. If you are going to advocate and element of the american system it is wise to at least understand why that element was adopted in the first place. Possibly. But under the cap system a youth system would seem to be of more value but like I said the richer teams will find ways to funnel money to players (I can guarantee you this will happen in Serie B - this is Italy afterall) Possibly. But that cna be accomplished just as easily by sharing the TV money evenly amongst all clubs in the top flight like it used to be. Thats the problem that needs to be addressed.
No way in hell would UEFA place a salary cap because if they did, then not enough money would generate across the continent
This isn't America where every team has a 500 mile 10 million people catchment area, here most games are NOT sold out. Many teams play in half empty stadiums. Many teams would see lower ticket prices as a way to tempt fans to watch their team rather than local rivals. I suppose so, but eventually some would be found out, and if the punishments were severe enough (i.e. expulsion to the conference), then it would nip most of it in the bud. In England TV money is relatively evenly distributed compared to continental leagues, but ticket, sponsorship and merchandise revenue, along with rich investors, means the richest teams are untouchable by anyone else. Without spending limits the Premiership will continue to be a farce.
It doesn't matter where it is. This is how products are priced in an open market they charge what they think people will pay This is not realistic. Are Shef Utd supporters going to switch to Wednesday because their prices are lower? How many Man U supporters go to Bolton games? Perhaps you are implying that the types who are from Bolton yet support Untied will start going to Bolton games instead then that would be a pretty big plus. Possibly. But more than likely in such a sceanrio all parties involved (agents/players/teams) will have far too much incentive to keep their mouths closed for much if any ino to leak out. We all know that right now there are managers who take money from agents to buy certain player for their clubs even though those players are not exactly what they are looking for, yet how much proof do we have about who exactly is doig it?
It doesn't take much to get round a cap if you have the right sponsors. You have Nike sponsoring Man Utd for £5 million a year (not a genuine figure, just an example). They then arrange with Man Utd to pay Rooney £2 million a year for a boot deal instead of £1 million, and pay Man Utd £4 million in sponsorship rather than £5 million. Suddenly Man Utd have an extra £1 million of cap money to play with.
Good example. I can't stress enought that before people come out in support of adoption of policies from american leagues they want adopted in europe they need to examine why those policies exist here, who is favor of said policies and what their motivations are.
Without some sort of penalty for overspending, ala Chelsea, European soccer will continue to be a joke. Each season there are only 2-3 teams in each league that have a realistic shot of winning the league let alone the Champions League. This is boring. Having teams with stockpiles of great players that never play is also a waste and deprives the fans. Look at Shaun Wright Philips. He went from having a chance to unseat Beckham on the right side of the English midfield to barely being able to make the subs bench at Chelsea and then not even being given a look by Sven when he chose his roster. A salary cap may not be the answer, but some sort of control needs to be implemented to avoid the game becoming even more of a joke.
If there are all these ways around salary caps, why do they bother with them in America? Surely the richest NFL teams would find ways around it so they could outspend everyone else?
As I stated teams are operated with different ideas in mind in US sports leagues. Over here teams are are basically investments for the vast majority of owners. They want to maximise profits. So they have little incentive to funnel money to players. If it were up to the owners they would pay the players peanuts. MLS is an example of what occurs when owners have virtually uncheckeed power. A salary cap helps them keep costs low. In socccer in europe teams need to win or they may end up paying the price. American owners don't have incentive to break caps, european team operatros do.