Why football needs a transfer cap in place?

Imagine a World were football wasn’t dominated by money? Well this will not change in the near future. The ever increasing amount of big money takeovers and transfers are changing and shaping the game today. You can even say that money makes the decisions in the highest echelons of the game at FIFA with the corruption scandal rife & ongoing accusations of the votes that decided where the 2018 & 2022 World Cup went to. Those votes went to Russia & Qatar. It is these two nations in which much of the money is flowing out of.

 

The Russian league has seen its stock rise since CSKA Moscow’s UEFA Cup win in the 2004-2005 season over Sporting Lisbon & Zenit St Petersburg’s victory over Rangers in the 2007-2008 version of the tournament. The main factor for these successes was the amount of money being pumped into the clubs by oil companies Sibneft and Gazprom respectively. These sponsorship deals allowed the clubs to sign better players as a result, and these wins attracted better managers in Dick Advocaat, Michael Laudrup & Luciano Spalletti and renowned foreign players, alas Kevin Kuranyi, Bruno Alves & Keisuke Honda. This season has also seen the big money acquisition by Suleyman Karimov of Anzhi Makhachkala, in which the club signed Roberto Carlos & Balasz Dzsudzsak & had a £40.3million pound offer accepted for Neymar amongst Europe’s heavyweights & Ruud Gullit taking charge of Terek Grozny, only to be sacked after struggling at the club. Add this to the newly established Russian ownership of Swiss outfit Neuchatel Xamax & Roman Abramovich’s takeover of Chelsea in 2003 starting the chain of foreign owned English clubs.

 

The Middle East does not have any internationally recognised leagues, clubs or players, but its investment abroad in football clubs in major European leagues. It started in 2008 when Man City where purchased by the Abu Dhabi group, and in these 3 years, the club has gone from relegation candidates to Champions League qualifiers & FA Cup winners. Without money, would any of this have happened? The past year has also seen Qatar mainly being the major football money force. Taking out that scandalous World Cup vote, the Qatar Foundation agreed a shirt sponsorship deal with Barcelona worth up to £170million pounds over 5 years, a takeover of PSG by the QIA (Qatar Investmen Authority, who also were rumoured to have put in a bid to buy Manchester United) & a Qatari Sheikh buying out Spanish side Malaga, in which they have signed big name players such as Dutchmen Ruud Van Nistelrooy & Joris Mathijsen.

 

You might be thinking what these two countries have with the thought of a transfer salary cap. Well, the answer is that without any of these investments, would money be as big an influence in the game? Many people would say that the Galacticos Part 1 era at Real Madrid, the major inflation of TV money paid out to the big clubs in particular or the World Transfer record increasing more year by year would make the change inconceivable, but I disagree with this. Foreign ownership of clubs has seen more money go into a countries domestic leagues, therefore increasing the quality of players, managers & stadiums, making that league more attractive to play in, e.g. a player would reject a move to a historic club, such as Fenerbache, to play in the Premier League for a team like Stoke or Wigan. These takeovers show no signs of stopping and will only increase in the near future, in a move that could see the football world implode.

 

I am in favour of UEFA’s Financial Fair Play System, but if this is going to work, a transfer cap should be introduced to supplement it. If a £50million pound transfer cap plus any money from transfer sales rule was put in place, it would allow a club only to spend as much money as it has got and not let the club run into debt. This would also allow the league to be more open and competitive in terms of league titles & European competition. The rule would work to great effect, especially in England, as this would allow clubs to develop good young players who are hopefully good enough for the national team, and maybe the rule could see England win a World Cup in the future. My final reason is that this should hopefully stop the hyper inflation of players. Andy Carroll signed for Liverpool for £35million pounds, despite having only scored 9 Premier League goals, Neymar is one of the best young players around, but surely £40.3million pounds for an unproven player is too much, while finally, would Jordan Henderson have been worth £20million pounds 15 years ago?

 

Hopefully I have tried to convince you to the need of a transfer cap to allow the football world to progress in the future. Money is changing the game too much & fans will become too disillusioned with the game due to a lack of competition and a hyper inflated value of players for being either young or English. This is what happened to me last season as I converted from being a loyal Bolton fan to a Barnet fanatic. Why? The footballers played for a love of the game and not for a love of a whooper pay cheque.

 

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