http://www.soccernomics-agency.com/?p=454 Interesting...always seemed somewhat short sighted as a regulation.
If you really think this through, FFP would exclude a huge swathe of clubs that regularly compete in Euro competition! Who knows--if it comes to pass we might see Tunbridge Wells playing in Europe!
Interesting post. It will preserve the current status quo that is for sure ("Fossilization of the existing market structure (i.e. the current top clubs are likely to maintain their leadership, and even to increase it);
Thats what always makes me laugh when wums on here bang on about FFP like it will stop the top teams dominating all it will achieve is make the top clubs in Spain England and Germany even stronger.
UEFA always touted FFP as a measure to stop clubs from going bankrupt, but it was all the time an arse about way of trying to stop rich investors making teams super powers like Roman did with us and what Mansour is doing at City. UEFA got their noses put out of joint because the wrong teams started winning the big titles. I can see why people would think it somewhat unfair but seriously, what club hasnt become top dog due to money? And all these people saying "yes its money the club itself earnt etc", yeah, earnt by selling their souls on the stock exchange, or with hideously transparent foreign tours to the Far East, or bringing out 3 new strips a season made by ten year old chinese kids in Sweat shops. Man Utds rise to power came at the exact right time for them. Sky had just invented the Premier League, TV money overtook gate receipts as a clubs primary income source and Man Utd won the first title of a new division that was being broadcast around the world for the first time, coincidence that they are still a super power to this day? Especially since they hadnt won a league title in donkeys years before that. They became Sky's cash cow to a whole new generation of arm chair fans....how is this fundamentally all that different from a rich foreign investor?
Spot on Bodanki! The day Jimmy Hill masterminded the end of players maximum pay limitations, began the crazy financial structure that football has become!
Former UK Chancellor, Nigel Lawson I think, can tell us why FFP will never work. On " Black Friday" he failed miserably in his attempt to manipulate the markets, and watched on helplessly as UK interest rates hit 18% !!! In Australia we have a form of FFP called Salary Cap covering Football, Rugby, Rugby League and Australian Football. It's been around for years. The same top 4 or 5 big clubs win everything, the small clubs win nothing and stay small. The salary cap never allows small clubs to get the players they need to become big clubs. EUFA will learn that you cannot legislate to make everyone equal, the market will beat you every time.
Summed up in a sentence! spot on! The market is so geared towards Real Madrid and Man Utd that everything else becomes inconsequential if you do not add outside investment. Arsenal tried their hardest to challenge Man Utd on a shoe string and would pinch the odd title every 4 years or so, mostly due to Arsene Wengers keen eye for youth, but they never were able to retain the league title because every other summer, Utd would just spend 25-35 million to bolster their squad and get the title back for another 2-3 years. Its just not viable. I wonder how the Premier League would have looked the last 10 years had Abramovich and Sheikh mansour not come along. Utd would have won atleast 9 of the last 10 titles believe me. (with only Arsenals invincibles season to stop them from the perfect 10). Maybe Liverpool may have stepped up around 2006ish to grab a title *spit*, but you cannot say for sure. The last 4 titles that HAVENT gone to Utd have all been by teams backed largely by foreign investment (Chelsea x 3 and City x 1)
The market is already distorted when you have big Spanish banks using players as part collateral for accessing ECB emergency funding on the one hand.... yet continue to bankroll clubs like Real Madrid on the other. Effectively the Borrusia Dortmund supporting taxpayer is subsiding Real.... The irony! The last thing we need is to exacerbate these institutional advantages with policies that will only distort the market further. In the long run, no good ever comes out of restricting competition - and its this that will threaten the stability of European football. Those short sighted clowns in UEFA will end up creating monsters far uglier than the occasional badly financed club going to wall. The faster the European High Court ends this nonsense, the better for all.
