UEFA salary cap to address financial woes in European Football
Anthony Lopopolo
Roman Abramovich, who is the owner of private investment company Millhouse LLC, imposed a stake in the London franchise in 2003 and has been thought to have maimed the European transfer market by purchasing players at will and without consequence. One of his notable signings was the $53.5 million acquisition of striker Andriy Shevchenko from AC Milan in 2006, but he never panned out to be anything remotely close to his projected value nor reflected the flair he once exuded.
Now the Russian billionaire is believed to have lost $8.4 billion in his financial ventures due to the recession. With concerns about the stability of Chelsea increasingly pressing, it begs the question of whether another team like Manchester City may experience similar effects.
"Is it good for football?" Kelly questions. "If you're a Chelsea fan, it's probably bad for football. If you're a Manchester City fan, it's probably bad in the sense that these owners aren't rooted in your community, that your interests are not foremost in their mind.
"And it's the whole world-wide phenomenon of sport. This isn't just football and it isn't just England; it's every sport. I don't think it's a good trend anywhere, but that's the reality and I don't think it's going to change in the near future.
"I think with these trends you can look at the micro, from one year to the next, but in the grand perspective over a generation, the evolution of the sport won't be changing much."
Platini has been very critical of English teams and their penchant for inflating the price of prized assets in football. Although there is an abundance of wealth disseminating through the EPL, it must also be realized that teams in the Spanish, Italian and German leagues are also among the top earners in the sport.
There are four English teams ranked in the top 10 of the world's richest football clubs as of April 2009 along with two clubs from La Liga (Spain), Serie A (Italy) and Bundesliga (Germany), according to Forbes. They are also among a host of 25 other teams worth an average of $597 million (U.S.).
While the EPL is certainly a juggernaut in European football, Kelly doesn't find substance in an argument that reproaches the league for its purported incessant spending. Instead, he attributes the financial clout of the EPL to its expansive marketability.
"These teams (in the EPL) are going to spend as much as they can and get away with it. We're talking about a much greater audience ... and so they capture the imagination of more people, and therefore they have more dollars," he said. "Teams are going to spend exactly to their limits. They're not rational and that's why there are so many financial problems."
In the face of any salary cap talk, Kelly said, there is the potential of seeing teams disband from a massive revenue churner like the Champions League and create their own super league, too. "UEFA, like FIFA, is all about self-maintenance, it's all about survival," he said. "There's only so far you can push these clubs. I think everyone agrees that costs are spiralling out of control, but as long as clubs like Real Madrid and Manchester United are making money - and they make tons of it - why change the formula from their perspective?"
And if European Parliament, the governing body of the continent's football affairs, listened to a viable proposal from Platini inciting the implementation of a salary cap, it would first have to receive majority permission from the European Club Association, which represents some 150 clubs from UEFA's 53 member nations.
The UEFA body would only have jurisdiction over teams involved in intercontinental competition - leaving domestic clubs untouched and free to spend within their limits - and that would mean the most powerful clubs would dictate the ultimate fate of any salary cap pitch.
Whether they would agree under circumstantial terms, however, still remains a complex mystery.
"Salaries make up such an enormous amount of cost for most teams; you can get self-imposed salary caps on some teams. And they might simply decide that they're not going to pay over a certain amount; to make it a hard number," he said.
"I'm sure a team like Manchester United would love to have a salary cap as long as Chelsea and AC Milan and Lyon will all agree to it as well.
"But nobody wants to be the first."
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