Summer Transfer window 2017
- Thread starter StanDMan
- Start date
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I bought a Zola shirt 10 years ago, but this summer I bought 2 Oyster card holders, one for me, one for the Spud son in law.
I agree with the Barca President who says the influx of not just billionaires, but State Sponsored Owners, like the Qatar mob at PSG is really bad news and definitely will skew the competitions. Perhaps it is time to look at just who can own Clubs and work out a better spend / earn regulation.
Also time to look at Sky Sports part in the madness and the cost of licensing rights.
The state sponsor thing is definitely a problem but I struggle to have sympathy with Barca when they and Real Madrid have been distorting the transfer market with obscene transfer fees for years, have a monopoly over the tv revenue in Spain and Madrid themselves have had state aid and got in trouble for it.
https://www.ft.com/content/750e14a2-3f94-11e6-9f2c-36b487ebd80a
The Spanish are hypocrites.
I don't usually big up American stuff, but the way sport is run with salary caps and the lowest placed teams getting first dabs on the best incoming players is not an ideal model but we should pick the good elements from it.
Salary capping is not an easy thing to do after the Bosman Ruling and the EU restriction of trade laws, which I think would also impact the incoming players situation. They do it in Aussie Rules with only slight effects. Certainly the wages are kept under control, but even with so called "draft picks" the big teams stay big and the small teams stay small. There is some levelling of the field but nowhere near enough. I think the only way is to cut off the funding from the top down. That means keeping ownership away from States, really looking hard at TV revenue distribution, maybe in conjunction with a form of compulsory youth participation. I think with just a few exceptions, fan turnout at major codes is down, especially when compared with population growth. The game is too expensive and is starting to smell from the stench of obscene amounts of money. Tough problem, especially when a bunch of dodge pots like FIFA and EUFA run things.