about abramovich and money in football

[flotz]

i really think there should be a law against what abramovich is doing
i mean can a billionaire decide wich team he wants to win the league?
i mean there is a certain balance in the league and then bam some russian comes in and in 2 month bring in player for more than 100 millions and its like suddenly chelsea have a world star team nearly as good as a team it took wenger many years to build...if i was wenger i would be really pissed of...now lets face it it will be difficuly to compete with chelsea in some years when all their players come together
imagine what football will be in 20 years time , it will be like a game between russian or south american millionair and all what we like about football will be ruined
i really think there should be law against that or limitations about wage or sth like that

 

[Loylz]

I agree man. This stuff is not fair. I'm not saying I want a suger daddy. Far from it. I want there to be limitations on how much money can be input into a team by an owner. If it is the team's money then fine, but not if the money came from somewhere not at all connected to football. I mean, what Real Madrid are doing is not fair. They are never bankrupt, as the government is financing them, as the king likes that team. Also I think AC Milan is like that as well I think.

 

[flotz]

i bet its not even clean money

 

[Arjan]

Welcome to the real world, the entire italian league, with exception of Juventus have a debt in taxes alone of over 2 bilion euro's!
With Lazio number 1 at a 155 million euro's in not yet paid tax.
Real madrid sold their training ground for around 6 times the net worth to the city of Madrid. (netting them 400 million, which happened to be their entire debt!)

What you need is a decent salary cap! (or decent politicians, so let's go for the salary cap)

 

[flotz]

definitly there is a need for rules or the gap between rich and poor clubs will continue to grow as fast

 

[Mark]

I hope it stops too. We have come so far without much money to spend. We have achieved things the way they should be achieved. Chelski were going nowhere last season. They may even have failed to get through the qualifying stages of the CL. It's unfair and takes all the tradition out of the game so I hope some rules and restrictions are made.

 

[Gooner83]

There is no ban, because it doesn't work immediately.

You will always have some unhappy players, who want to play all the time.. there can never be a great team spirit.

 

[kNiteMare]

Salary cap would comes in soon, as this is getting out of hand. Most other sports have salary cap to ensure competitiveness.

The thing is i read somewhere that the salary cap is gonna based on % of income, so larger team would still have a higher salary cap. And it wont stops madrid as they can sell their T-shirt to the govt for 100mil each and that's income for them.

 

[Soler]

You can't have a salary cap in European soccer. It just doesn't work like AFL, NRL, NFL, etcetera

 

[Aussie]

Well its a good time to be a rich club as with some carefull managment you can stay on top for a long time.

 

[KingReyes]

Real madrid sold their training ground for around 6 times the net worth to the city of Madrid. (netting them 400 million, which happened to be their entire debt!)

And they still use it like they always have.

 

[Exiled In Newcastle]

The thing about these rich people getting involved is it doesn't tend to last.

The best example of a 'sugar daddy' in recent times was Jack Walker at Blackburn. Now to be fair to Walker he was 100% a Blackburn fan, but he basically bought them the league in the same way Abramovic is trying to, but look at them now a decade later...

The biggest problem is not a guy with loads of money taking over a club, but the fact that one club has so much money skews the transfer market. The reason their are so many foreigners in English football is because they're cheaper. They're cheaper mainly because Blackburn were willing to pay so much for players (and to a lesser extent the cap on foreign players at the time) and the market is still overpriced because of that.

 

[lewdikris]

Smaller clubs are just as heavily reliant on independent personal finance as bigger clubs, just on a smaller scale. Look at Rushden and Diamonds, the big movers of the lower leagues - all on the basis of personal dollars. Or Wimbledon under Sam Hamman. You can't stop it entirely, or the whole league would go bust.

Abramovich is just a freakish one off at this level of finance, but he's no different in principle to about 50% of the league's clubs.

 

[EJub]

The only way for a wage cap to work is if it enforced by UEFA or FIFA.
A Champions League will not work if Spanish teams have no cap (for example)
and other countries do enforce a cap.

But in Europe it is more tricky, not every country has the same currency and such.

My thought is that Abramovich's money hurts the small teams the most. His cash injection causes a period of "transfer inflation" where the prices for all players increase. That usually hurts the smaller teams.

 

[tox]

Personally i have found the whole Chelsea saga pretty fascinating. Its also beefed up the competition for top spot in the Premiership which can't really do any harm.