English Premiership Salary Cap

[SMEE]

http://www.ftbpro.com/posts/ian.stewart.palmer/142113/premier-league-s-salary-cap-confusing-at-best?ref=facebook&team=Newcastle

 

Good thing? bad thing? feel free to discuss

[Rival]

Chelsea and City wont be too happy

[Scotty]

Good thing - domestically at least, but from the article, it sounds like they are seeking to implement it in a strange manner where high value contracts are already in place with players, and 13 of the 20 teams are already over, or in some cases well over that figure. The idea is good, but the implementation seems half-arsed, and the ticket money clause also seems wide open to abuse.

 

Also not sure how teams competing in Europe will see it when they cant spend what they want, and may lose ground to the huge European teams who can spend indiscriminately. Cant see it working properly unless there is a Europe-wide cap. Its a bit like describing our own frustrations when a player in Scotland moves from the SPL to the championship or lower and still gets paid more than he can earn in Scotland ......

 

 

 

 

Most folk know I watch Toronto FC in MLS. MLS is of course, a salary cap league but the cap is set far far lower than the EPL .... $2.95m per team or $56.05m in total. That equates to about £36.4m for the entire league ... a lot less than the £52-£60 million the EPL will set for each individual team over the next three years. Each team can of course have up to 3 designated players who earn over the individual player maximum - like David Beckham, Thierry Henry, and Torsten Frings did for each of the teams I mentioned above, or like Barry Robson or Kenny Miller if you want to make it a bit more Scottish .... but no team can fill their squad with huge wages just because they have the cash to do so ....

 

The biggest reason for this rule in MLS is because of what happened the first time round in the USA when the forerunner of MLS allowed teams like New York Cosmos to fill their teams full of (fading) superstars on ridiculous wages. The crowds did not come out as the sport was not really marketed, or of interest to most Americans, the wages were unsustainable, and "lesser" teams just could not compete and the league finally imploded.

 

This time round, MLS has a number of measures to encourage slow but steady growth that has seen it rise from 10 teams in 1996 to 19 teams in 2013. However it is a lot different than most leagues in the world

 

1. The league "owns" all of the teams.
2. Each team has an owner-operator who is a shareholder in the league
3. Each team must establish (or already have) a youth Academy as a condition of entry
4. In order to control costs, the league shares revenues and holds the players contracts instead of players being contracted to individual teams. They also have to approve salary negotiations.
5. When a transfer is made to a league outside of MLS (like Maurice Edu to Rangers for example), MLS gets the money and passes about 75% of it to the club, the rest is shared. The club must use that money for development, infrastructure or other things like that. A small proportion of it may be used as "allocation money" for a single year to allow the team to go a bit over the salary cap. Toronto used the Maurice Edu money to replace the artificial grass at BMO field with real grass, and also ploughed some of it into a huge new Soccer Academy complex they built

In terms of the salary cap, its complicated but works ..... these are the main bullet points

1. Teams can have a squad of up to 30 players
2. Salary cap is $2.95m (US$) per year, per team
3. The first 20 spots on the squad count against the salary cap
4. Players in spots 21-30 do not count against the cap and are known as off-budget players. You cannot add high earners into those spots to get around the cap.
   1. Players in spots 21-24 must earn minimum of $46500
   2. Players in spots 25-30 must earn minimum of $35125 (the league minimum)
   3. Players who earn league minimum must be under 24
5. Generation Adidas players are also "off budget" and can be anywhere in the squad from 1-30. These are players that have not yet graduated from college, but who MLS has signed to a contract. They can still finish college, but are available to teams without a cap hit. They tend to be good players. Maurice Edu, Landon Donovan, Carlos Bocanegra, are a few who came through that system. Generation Adidas players are usually paid more - sometimes a lot more - than spots 21-30 but not count against the cap.
6. Homegrown (Youth players promoted from team Academy). These players generally fit somewhere into 21-30 in the squad but up to 2 per year can be paid more than the 21-30 wage structure and not be counted against the cap.
7. Each team can have up to 3 designated players. The salary cap hit for a DP is $368,750 against your overall total. the player can be paid more (Beckham/Henry were getting $5m per year) but the team owners pay this.
8. A DP coming to a club in mid-season is a cap hit of 50% of the full year total.
9. Teams are encouraged to sign young DPs (to try and get away from the fading superstar image I guess). A player who is 20 or under on a DP contract is only a $150K cap hit, one who is 21-23 is a $200K hit.

 

 

Interestingly enough, there is talk over here - mainly from fans - about getting rid of the salary cap ... but personally, I would like to see it rise to maybe $5m instead of $3m which would allow teams to sign a strong squad as well as 2 or 3 quality DPs ..... right now, teams with DPs tend to have weaker players further down the squad list as they dont have as much wiggle room in salary .... but that is part of the levelling factor ......