A few yrs ago, I had the privilege of meeting a gent that had played half back for Crystal Palace in the 60's. he and I were debating the status of American sports and how the financial conditions abroad were different. We digressed into the merrits of a Salary Cap in professonal sports. He said, "a cap just won't work in Europe." At the time, MLS was new and had different ideas about single entity, revenue sharing and salary caps. All of which, IMHO, has contributed to the stability of the league versus the now defunct NASL. Salary caps were 1st introduced in the NBA and then followed by the NFL to combat escalating salaries in the 80's. I firmly believe that the NBA's survival is owed, @ least in part, to the cap on earnings. The NBA's popularity had dipped in the late 70's for a variety of reasons: violence & rampant drug use by the players( 1 player was rumored to have flashed a gun to his coach when he wouldnt put him in the game), salaries rose far above the avg fans income, TV games were shown in reruns @ late night, and inflation & a slow economy priced many fans out of attending the games (stadiums were 1/2 empty). All of these are parallels to our current state in futbol. The economy sucks & it's cheaper to watch @ hm than go to the matches. Big TV contract money isn't what it used to be and major clubs are haggling over the spoils. Nanderlone & that ugliness w/ liverpool players last yr, enough said. Rather then having major clubs, like barca, juve & metz, dump salaries to keep the doors open, why not place limits on transfers, loans, & earnings. All the while, Man U drops 45 mil on Rio and prices the other clubs out of level competition. I think having asymmetric leagues in talent level hurts the interest level in footy. Just like in MLB now, you know 1/2 of the league has no chance of winning b4 the season starts & you can say the same about the EPL. Why would I waste my Saturday or hard earned duckets on a predetermined outcome? I say cap the earings and restore a competative balance in Europe.
There will always be one FA that won't participate. Clubs in that league will be able to afford far pricier talent, and that country would run away with European honors every year. The sheer scope of it is too overwhelming. With the NBA, there are only 28 or so "big money" clubs in the world, and they are all regulated by the same entity. The only way you could achieve that for football is for UEFA or FIFA to step in and usurp the authority of each national FA. I think the odds of Martians beaming into my office right now, bringing me back to their planet and crowning me their emporer are slightly better.
A salary cap isn't really necessary as the clubs that overspend will be caugth out. Simple as that. Fiorentina was the first, now Lazio and Chelsea. The bubble hasn't burst but football has reached stauration point as far as income is concerned. There are only so many people who will watch football and the TV rights prove this. Clubs are listed on stock exchanges and are run like multi national companies. The boardroom has to perform as well the players or the club can be ruined. Every hates Man U and it's just jealousy. Up until the mid 80's they were a big club but no bigger than Spurs and Everton or Valencia and Real Sociedad. They approached a consultancy firm (Saatchi and Saatchi) and asked them how they could run the club more like a business and generate more income. Ferguson is a good coach but their real success can date back to that meeting. They can afford to spend $40m on players, pay them $100,000 a week and still end up in the red at the end of the fiscal year. The Champions League is where the real competition is. All the big clubs playing eachother. If Real, Bayern, Juve and Man U have that commercial success why not spend the money. If a salary cap was introduced you'd just see the board members of each club get $5 million bonuses each year. Would that make you happier?
I understand the frustrations of small market clubs; however, despite the massive amount of money, ManU is not like the NY Yankees. I say this despite my dislike for both teams. In MLB, MLS, NHL, NFL, NBA - teams are franchises, hence part of a single league structure. Having monopolies over given geographical areas creates fixed inequalities (the Yankees are in the largest market in the US. while the Brewers or the Twins will always struggle in small markets). Regardless of how many teams NY could support (it used to be 3 until the early 50s) there will always be two. This does not exist in football (soccer). Manchester is not the largest market in the UK. Nor is ManU's position an official monopoly. If you were a billionaire and wanted to have your own club in Manchester (or buy out Man City), plow in milions of pounds and threaten ManU's dominance, there's nothing preventing you from doing it (except the money of course). Likewise there is nothing from keeping ManU at the top of the league, if they suck for 4 years they can theoretically find themselves languishing in 3rd division. What you have in European football is a free-market system. Of course this is hypothetical, ManU won't be going down any time soon. However I'm sure if you'd seen Wolves dominate the league in the 40s and 50s you'd be hard pressed to forsee that this club would suck for decades to come (also ask the Liverpool supporters in the 80s and imagine what would they have thought). What's always made me laugh is the crap that soccer gets in the US becuase its "un-American" or even "socialist" when American sports leagues are among the most anti-capitalist oligarchic institutions ever concieved in this country. As for single entity, MLS teams have about as much collective soul as a the fast food restaurants that dot the interstate exit ramps. The single-entitiy is a neccesity becuase soccer in the country is still in its infancy and the league investors are afraid that too much competion will destroy the league in its embryonic state like what happened to the NASL. Unfortunately, I believe tha even if the MLS were to make loads of money and expand faster than even the most optimistic expectations, the league would always remain closed and monopolistic w/out promotion or relegation. This structure, while stable, actually turns off many potential fans (like me and other European/S. American football fans) because the teams seem to be artificial cookie-cutter and completely interchangeable. The rivalry forums in the MLS make me laugh because it sounds to me like people arguing over whose McDonald's is better the one in my town or the one in yours. Also remember, unlike the US which has a VERY crowded pro-sports market (if MLB starts to suck - like it does now- people move on to another sport). In Europe and Latin America football is considered to be the ONLY sport. While there are other sports none come close to football's popularity. Besides, while most English clubs will not compete for the Premiership, there's still the UEFA cup, the Intertoto, the league cup, and the FA cup. Given that every town has its own club (most large cities have more than one), winning any one of these trophies is a great honor. Also the struggle of pro/rel often draws even more fans but for the opposite reason (you don't want to see your club effectively die by being relegated). There are some limitations, like too much TV money which have been detrimental; however the collapse of ITV Digital and the falling broadcast prices seem to suggest that the market is correcting this. Now understand, that I'm do Gee Dub lassiez faire advocate. I just think its stupid to replace a free market system (with all its faults) with an oligopoly (which is how sports is run the this country).
I think a cap is neccessary. I read the other day that the balance of benefit in soccer was switching from the clubs to the players: the players -the superstars- are getting more benefit than the clubs. I would see right that G14 reached an agreement on this matter.
Uniteds wealth doesn't date back to any satchi and satchi meeting - if you look at the attendences (which were the major source of income) you'll see United led throughout the 70's and the 80's (setting at one point a record average attendence over the season which stood until very recently...). We also had money to spend in the early 80's - breaking the transfer record for Bryan Robson. Uniteds wealth can be attributed to good post war crowds and a large stadia. The club also had to gear itself towards fund raising in the early 50's to rebuild Old Trafford - the setting up of a development association which exists to this day with hundreds of agents in Manchester is a more tangible reason than "suddenly we started acting like a buisness...". Football clubs have always operated in the red - the only difference is these days the figures of money can't be as easily raised because they are simply huge. In the early 50's only three or four clubs were actually operating at a profit - United, Sunderland and Everton - but none of the other clubs went bust (or very few have...). Football is simply not a buisness in the conventional sense. The clubs should get by day to day and not worry about tommorow because theres always a way around any problems. And if theres money floating around it should go to the players. What i would suggest is some rule that every club must make 25-50% of thier tickets below a certain price (£15 sounds good). I'd rather savings be passed onto the fans. If there was less money to be spent on wages in the clubs then wages would be lower - simple. The reasons behind the current crashes are more due to television money starting to dry up...