Arsenal chief executive calls for salary cap
While Dr Al Fahim haggles with Sacha Gaydamak over price (nothing to worry about; you see a house and then you haggle over price, right?), Portsmouth remain in limbo with the clock ticking down towards pre-season. It is not worth thinking about the collapse of the deal at this stage! So while we bite our nails and wait, let’s talk about football.
That’s right, I want to talk about football. Although you will see that this is really about football (!) football. I went through a phase in the mid 80’s of watching football every week. It was easy to do as an eight-year-old because it was shown on a weekly Sunday night highlights show on Channel 4. The host was Mick Luckhurst, a British boy who had made it big in the NFL as a kicker. with the Atlanta Falcons. I think there was also a bearded guy named Nicky Horne who may have preceded Luckhurst, and then there was Gary Imlach. I was taken with the drama, but of course the gameplay (brief bursts of action separated by long interludes where the clock stops, meaning a game with a play time of one hour can last three) lends itself to this type. of featured packages. Even now, live games (apart from perhaps the Superbowl) would be too much. I’ll never buy a Sky subscription either, so the only way I’ll really see it again is if the featured format makes its way to Freeview. By the way, the Chicago Bears were my team. They had William ‘The Refrigerator’ Perry and Walter Payton. I think they beat the New England Patriots to win the Superbowl for the first time in a long time, and they’ve done practically nothing in the twenty-five years since!
Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis recently called for a salary cap in an article in The Guardian. You can read it here. In it he refers to the cap operated in American football. The thing about football is that the team with the worst record in a particular year could turn around the next to become the best. Because? A combination of the college selection system and the salary cap, probably. The draft system means that the worst teams get the first pick of the best college players and the best have to wait until the end. Now of course we don’t have the same college (or university) sports system, but we still used to have the situation where a promoted team could go on and challenge for the league title the following season. Nottingham Forest achieved that with Brian Clough some thirty years ago. Not only that, they immediately won the European Cup twice in a row. Just like the NFL today, they were only able to do that because our league was really competitive. Today it is not, and that is because money and greed are out of control.
The NFL is rich, players are paid more than most people could dream of, and yet the competition is even. Product integrity is maintained. I don’t have a problem with players earning big salaries, but now things are getting nasty. How much do they need? Manchester City have reportedly recently offered Samuel Eto’o £180,000 a week. £180,000 a year would be more than enough to pay for some financial advice and be safe for the rest of his life. We’re not even talking about endorsement deals or image rights here!
For now, it seems that we are stuck in the model that considers television money to provide the main income for football clubs in this country. In turn, wealthy investors are attracted. But more of this money needs to go towards improving the club’s infrastructure and facilities and nurturing young talent. Not in the pockets of established stars. The level of salaries looks especially unpalatable in the current economic climate, and while fans no longer pay player salaries, TV companies still pay to show games in packed, lively stadiums. Without the fans there would be no football.
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