In current times there are not many rules that limit a team's salary cap in professional soccer. The current rules that coincide with salary cap in the Union of European Football Association are the financial fair play rules. The financial fair play rules state that "clubs are only allowed to spend five million more than they make for each assessment period (three years)." Many people who are part of the bigger soccer clubs (Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich) think that these rules suffice and are fair for the league to enforce. But, many smaller teams (Valencia, Deportivo, Sevilla) say that these rules are not fair because these huge clubs make a ridiculously large sum of money in the three years' time compared to the small clubs. That leaves the league to the question, is it fair for the larger teams to be able to spend so much more on players because they make more money or should there be an overall salary cap for all teams dependent on your league?

 Yes, the financial fair play rule is better than it used to be as managers of teams used to be able to spend millions out of pocket for players and stack up their teams, but is the financial fair play rule really enough? Most people who are against increasing the rules when it comes to salary caps are a part of the bigger clubs or are even fans of the bigger clubs and just want to see their favorite teams become more and more powerful. When you compare the Union of European Football Association to American sports leagues like the National Football Association when it comes to salary caps, the NFL's salary cap is way stricter than any salary cap appointed to soccer clubs. In the NFL every team has the same set salary cap at the beginning of the year and based off of key players net values they have to build teams around a few key players. In soccer clubs, the more money you make the more you can spend money on players. While this might seem fair, if you look at the numbers of the 2012-2013 season's wage budget for Real Madrid; they had a wage budget of 190 million euros, while Real Betis on the bottom of the league only had 15 million euros to work with. This huge amount of money that Real Madrid has to work with allows them to not only buy a few key players and build their team around those few players, but it allows them to buy all key players and have eleven out of eleven players on the field that are all worth more than 30 million apiece; all worth two times more than Real Betis's entire wage limit. If UEFA was willing to move towards a more across the board salary cap for all teams this would even the playing field out for all teams.

Not only would increasing salary cap restrictions even out the amount that the teams could spend on players, but it would also make the game a little more interesting to watch. The big clubs would no longer be able to stack their teams with star players and would have to base their club off of a few key players and in some occasions maybe even one. This could make teams put more strategy into the game instead of just buying the win with a whole bunch of good players. When it comes to the huge tournaments in European Football, it is always the same teams coming out as the top ten to twenty teams every year. With a stricter wage limit in place it would make these large tournaments more competitive in the early stages and would in turn make UEFA more money in the long run.

UEFA thinks that the rules that are in place now are enough to regulate the amount of money a club can spend on players for their team. But many people disagree with UEFA and think that there should be stricter rules put into place. UEFA states on their website, "Financial fair play is about improving the overall financial health of European club football.", meaning, the financial fair play rule is all that UEFA needs to make European club football fair and equal. Stefan Szymanski, from Imperial College London, states that the European football leagues should be more about equality of opportunity for all teams instead of equality of opportunity for a small amount of teams. This means that there is some equality in the system that is in place now for wage limits, but overall it only creates equality for a few large clubs and leaves the small clubs behind in the dust.

Slowly the Union of European Football Association is moving towards a stricter salary cap more like the National Football League, but I am personally unsure if they will ever fully enforce such a strict salary cap, as it has always been a part of football for hundreds of years that the larger clubs are the clubs that win most of their games. If a stricter salary cap was to be applied, we would be likely to see more competition arise in European Football and more football teams in general who have iconic players on their teams. This in turn could lead to more interesting and a lot more equal skill levels. 

