UEFA salary cap to address financial woes in European Football
Anthony Lopopolo
There was a considerable dose of apprehension permeating Europe when Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan - a member of the ruling family of trillion dollar fortune in Abu Dhabi - established a majority stake in English Premier League (EPL) club Manchester City.
As the economic climate looked to be turning grim heading into August 2008, Sheikh Mansour revelled in all his financial glory. In an attempt to turn his adequate English football team into a ubiquitous household name, one synonymous in influence with intercity rival Manchester United, Mansour began scouring the globe for potential players on his fantasy list.
Striker Robinho, who had been mired in a tireless struggle with the Spanish media as a mercurial fixture in Real Madrid's lineup last season, was purchased by Manchester City for a fee of $68 million and was the first player to be added to a project predicted to be a dog's breakfast of the world's best footballers.
This acquisition, however, would prove to be modest after Mansour proposed to essentially annihilate the upper echelons of athlete earnings after proclaiming to fancy the idea of Kaka, a midfielder for Italian club AC Milan and a former world player of the year, in a Manchester City uniform.
The offer ranged from outrageous to indecent sums of cash - which purportedly peaked at $250 million with incentives, advertisement cuts, player agent earnings and club compensation all included in the alluring price gouger - but a deal presented to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, owner of AC Milan, was ultimately rejected.
After many fans quivered at the possibility of seeing Kaka added to the list of richest athletes in the world - he would have challenged Alex Rodriguez's contract worth $275 million with the New York Yankees - it seemed as if a modern-day Fortinbras had come to restore order to football's court amid months of chaos and precarious rumours.
But while Manchester City is stationed in the middle of the EPL standings and remains apparently calm in the wake of their futile effort to buy a championship as quick as possible, their endeavours appear to have resonated in Michel Platini, president of UEFA, and may even affect the world of football as anyone knows it.
In a meeting held with European Parliament late February, Platini brought the notion of financial fair play to the forefront, providing several examples and reasons that underline spiralling fiscal commitment and leverage being abused by the world's top clubs. Manchester United, Chelsea, Real Madrid and the like have fledged their wings and soared to the heights of European competition through hefty expenditures not feasible for newly promoted teams in the past decade. The direct result has been continued success for a handful of teams, with their affluence being the primary factor in maintaining an exclusive monopoly.
In order to quell the likelihood of perpetuating such trends, Platini has vocalized the necessity of instituting a salary cap. It is his wish to follow in accordance with North American sporting leagues and adhere to a bona fide cap on finances equivalent to the NHL, NFL and NBA.
There have been discussions pertaining to financial restraints in previous years, which proposed to allocate a certain chunk of revenue for player expenditures and deter owners from dipping into their own savings, but none have ever materialized.
Cathal Kelly, sports reporter of the Toronto Star, believes it would not be feasible to envision a realm in which every team played on fair financial terms, as teams like Manchester United and Real Madrid extend their power far beyond the confines of the sport and its competition, becoming almost bigger than what football actually represents.
"Many clubs are entirely privately owned. Why would they open their books up to some administrator? Where is their interest in this? What I think you would get is years upon years of corrosive litigation. I can't imagine why anyone would want to get involved in that," he said. "We have this inborn inkling of nostalgia; everything was better before. I think these teams have always been unbalanced in terms of financial clout and that is polarizing now.
"But Manchester City is proof that, only a year in, you can't win championships solely with money. I guess Chelsea can be discussed in the same vein, from its rise and fall almost."
Chelsea, of course, may be considered the harbinger of a decade that has seen entrepreneurs invest in football as a side project to their Fortune 500 companies.
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