Girona are currently 4-1 up against Real Madrid. NYC FC loanee Taty Castellanos has scored all four goals for the home side.
By conceding repeatedly to a City Football Group player? It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for 'em.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/65390188 Fantastic news if true but I'll hedge my bets on it ever happening.
I guess it’ll depend what the cap is though. If it’s something stupid like £500,000 p/w, it won’t make a scrap of difference. if it’s something “reasonable” like £250,000, then if a club has a seamless strategy and recruitment plan in place, it could be very beneficial to those who are known as “selling clubs”. Not only may they be able to keep some of their talent as the wage increase at the prospective club is less likely to blow the current wage out of the water, but if they do sell, they’ll make a fortune whilst continuing to bring in the next player on the conveyor belt.
if it’s something “reasonable” like £250,000, I know it's in quotes but the fact we can write it and use the word reasonable even in quotes, wow! It makes sense on the one hand but it will presumably increase the profits of owners and the argument that the players create the wealth still applies. Would it also need some sort of cap on transfer fees as well? Otherwise clubs like City, PSG, and Madrid will surely just pay more for players to maintain their dominance.
I think it will only work if it the total spent per season on amortised transfer fee plus salary is capped. But I can't see the cap being set at less than £300m so not sure what effect it will have in practice.
I doubt an individual salary cap would change much to be honest. Whether it be £250k or £500k, clubs like City would still dominate the market as they could pay many more players that max wage than what others could, some clubs can’t even afford to pay one player £250k a week, let alone multiple. A fairer way to increase competition and create a level playing field would be to have a total salary cap for the first team, ie all players wages cannot exceed a total of say £4m or £5m a week. That way not even City could then completely dominate the market because if they chose to may multiple players £250k-£300k a week, a lot of other players would then have to be on significantly less and theoretically lesser pay would equal lesser quality of player. Do a total salary cap and I think you could have potentially up to 10+ teams vying for for the title with well balanced squads scattered with a bit of star quality.
What would be equitable ?? The top flight career of most players is short, and they do not have the academic/industry skills to make their wealth elsewhere post football. So you would want them to have a fund at that point that would be allow them to see out the rest of their days more than comfortably (inflation proofed etc) . I suspect that all the above could be achieved for such players, even allowing for a quite aggressive tax regime, on wages quite a bit lower than their current wage levels.
That fund I believe already exists in some form under the stewardship of the PFA, but if you were to somehow cap wages, there’s definitely scope for it to be more formalised and institutionalised.
The PFA acts as an escrow agent for UK-based players ?? By which I mean players have to hand over a % of their wages post tax to the PFA, that they cannot access until they officially retire.
i know, I cringed when I wrote it! But sadly there’s a lot of players earning a figure in that region.
Not exactly. To clarify, I believe the PFA operate some sort of fund that mainly for professionals lower down in the pyramid supports those who have career ending injuries in the aftermath to help them get back on their feet. I believe all PFA members contribute. They offer other services too that in the short term are covered by the union. I guess what I’m saying is that the idea of a body supporting players through traumatic events and trying to help them in life after football (whether a career comes to an natural end or an enforced one) isn’t new at all. But if you were to cap wages you could probably find money somewhere to expand and refine this support if the players wanted it.
You begin to see the issues that cause tax avoidance (bypassing one edict by using another to the "letter of the law" but not the spirit) . So I "what if ..." on this, and another bypass will emerge. And so on.. You will probably end up with something that neither conforms to the ''3 Cs' (correct/complete/consistent) nor is it simple/succinct.
They did in the days of the Maximum Wage Of course, those bonuses weren't exactly written down anywhere...
It'll probably be circumvented via signing-on and various other performance related bonuses. For example a player who would previously be offered £400k per week could easily be offered the new maximum salary and then £100k per goal plus £50k per appearance etc. It is so easy to make bonuses ludicrously over inflated as there is nothing legally preventing it, but only the top percentile of wealthy clubs can afford to do it. As you say, unless there is a TOTAL salary cap that takes into account ALL money changing hands from club to player for whatever reason at all, this is as doomed to fail as FFP was.
Sorry Tilly, meant to reply to this point but I'm so used to arguing with DH I automatically hit reply to his point.
