European soccer is popular worldwide with leagues like Barclays Premier League (English), La Liga BBVA (Spanish), Bundesliga (German), and many more. In these leagues there are teams that are known worldwide as well, like Real Madrid (La Liga), Barcelona (La Liga), Manchester United (BPL), Arsenal (BPL), Bayern Munich (Bundesliga), and many more along with those. But, what about the teams that they play every year? Why are those teams not known worldwide and why do these specific teams always have good seasons compared to others throughout their perspective leagues? The answer to these question is The Union of European Football Association's (UEFA) rule called the Financial Fair Play Rule. The Financial Fair Play Rule is that a Club can only spend five million more than they make in a three-year period. This type of market would work if all the teams made the same amount of money, but the teams listed above make hundreds of millions more than their competition, especially in La Liga and Bundesliga. Although it would require a good bit of work, I believe that the Union of European Football Association should change the Financial Fair Play Rule to a salary cap style transfer market. 

In La Liga the two teams that are known worldwide are Barcelona and Real Madrid. These teams have iconic players like Lionel Messi, Neymar da Silva Santos, Luis Suarez, Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale, and many more world-class players throughout both teams. Having these world-class players allows these teams to win their league almost every year, but, these players have very large salaries moving up to 288 million Euros a week. Barcelona and Real Madrid in the 2013-2014 season were allowed to spend 200 million euros on their teams' wages (this number only increases every year, as the team earns more and more money each year). Their competition in La Liga were only allowed to spend an average of 27.78 million in that same 2013-2014 season. That's almost on average 200 million more euros that these two teams are allowed to spend on their team. It is a wonder as to how they lose any games at all according to these numbers. 

Using this table, you can see that because of the way the Financial Fair Play Rule works, Real Madrid is allowed to spend 200 million more Euros on their team's wage budget compared to the five teams that are only allowed to spend eleven million. This can cause a major unbalance when it comes to the actual game as well, because teams like Almeria, Rayo Vallecano, etc. cannot afford world-class players like the top teams can. This in response makes it basically impossible for these smaller teams to ever win against the larger teams. If the wage budget/transfer market was switched to an American style salary cap base wage budget it would allow all the teams to spend the same amount of money on players' salaries. This would overall make the league more even all throughout and it would make the competition more interesting to watch. It would give the smaller teams a chance to win against the larger teams. The Financial Fair Play System could also be seen as a little corrupt.

Corruption is everywhere in the world; whether it be government politics or just a recreational sporting event. The Union of European Football Associations is no exception. Like Kartik Krishnaiyer stated, "I have for a long while felt that Financial Fair Play is a system designed specifically to protect the biggest clubs in European football. The current hierarchy in the European game sees an established 10-12 teams all from big western European leagues dominate the continental game. I have argued that FFP locks in the monopoly for these clubs and prevents future rivals from emerging. (Kartik Krishnaiyer)" What this quote states is that the way the that Financial Fair Play Rule works currently only allows for the same few big clubs to continue to grow and become better while all the smaller clubs that don't have as much money can't produce or purchase the players needed to make their teams grow, which in turn leads to the few huge clubs dominating the entire league and making it really hard for smaller clubs to rise up and become as big as the new teams. Some say that UEFA keeps the Financial Fair Play Rule going because it is what brings in the most money to the big clubs which in turn brings in money for UEFA. If UEFA was to change the transfer market/wage budget into a salary cap base it would allow for smaller clubs to spend the same amount as the larger clubs, causing them to grow at a similar rate. This would also cause the world-class players to start spreading through the teams in each league and would surely but slowly level the playing field and make soccer more interesting to watch world-wide. Another way to prove that all UEFA wanted was money from the Financial Fair Play Rule is the fact that Financial Fair Play " ... substantially reduces competition, resulting in lower average payrolls, while average revenues are hardly affected. Depending on the exact regime, wage to turnover rations would decline by eight percent to fifteen percent. (Stefan Szymanski)" This means that since the Financial Fair Play rule was put into place that the average player's wage has decreased and the average revenue due to such player has increased. 

Income distribution is another way that you could describe the Financial Fair Play Rule. Income distribution is the amount of money that certain teams are allowed to spend compared to the amount of money that they make. " ... weak teams are concerned that an increasing inequality in the income distribution of clubs leads to a decrease in the odds of beating strong teams. Poorer teams used to receive revenues from transferring players with great talent to top teams, but his source of income has vanished after the Bosman ruling. (According to the Bosman ruling by the European Court of Justice, a soccer player form the European Community is a free agent after his contract has expired.) (Ruud H. Koning)" Not only does the Bosman ruling make the smaller teams lose money, but it also made the world-class high dollar player not want to go to the smaller teams, because they will not get any bonus from it anymore. The Bosman ruling combined with the Financial Fair Play Rule has basically stopped all growth for smaller clubs in European soccer, because they cannot afford to buy the high value players, and even if they could afford them, the high dollar players would not want to go to the smaller clubs because they would get payed a lot less and they would get no huge signing bonus for signing with the smaller teams. If the Union of European Football Associations applied an American style salary cap base transfer market, even though the Bosman ruling would still be in affect and the players would not get a signing bonus for joining the smaller teams, at least the smaller clubs would be allowed to spend the same amount as the bigger clubs on those more expensive world class players. 

"What has also made headlines in the Australian Football League has been the number of clubs who have been forced to trade big name players in the last few years, including players still under contract, in order to remain under the salary cap. Other players meanwhile agreed to take pay cuts from their existing contracts to help ensure their club remained within the salary cap. (Chris Davies)" Chris Davies in this quote writes about how in the Australian Football League, who has already adopted an American style salary cap based transfer market/wage budget, some of the players are forced to take pay cuts and/or the team is forced to trade away a huge name player to a smaller team because they do not have any cap room for said player. This in turn creates a much more interesting transfer market and spreads the talent all throughout the specific leagues. In the European leagues I can think of many teams who would (depending on the amount of salary cap placed) would have to trade away not only one high value player, but maybe even up to five or six so that they could stay under the cap. While this issue of the larger clubs needing to trade away many players could cause some controversy between fans, I think that overall this would help the competitiveness from the smaller teams and overall level the playing field to make these leagues more interesting to watch. This would also cause teams to be more strategic with who they want to purchase, trade, and keep on their roster. For example, say that Cristiano Ronaldo had a salary cap value of 50k and the overall salary cap for each team was 300k, Real Madrid would have to decide if it was worth the loss in the salary cap to keep him or if they should trade him away in order to get two players for the same salary cap value. I believe that this would make the transfer market more interesting, it would make teams use strategy as to who they wanted to buy, instead of just having the money so why not spend it on players. 

Throughout an article Johan Lindholm brings up the issues with using a salary cap instead of an open transfer market like Financial Fair Play. He states that there are a few legal actions that would need to take place in order to make the switch and it is not something that could just happen overnight. One legal action is that all of those high dollar players with contracts that needed to be traded away in order for a team to stay under the salary cap have to be paid in full, which could make a lot of the larger teams lose a lot of money and in turn would make The Union of European Football lose money as well. "The introduction of salary caps in European football (sometimes called "soccer") will likely have a greater impact on European sports and be subject to legal challenge due to the massive amount of money involved (Johan Lindholm)." Some might say that that would be fine if the big clubs just had to lose a little money, but with the amount of players who make such a large sum of money, it could potentially bankrupt many clubs and if not UEFA itself. Although John Lindholm brings up good points as to why we should keep the Financial Fair Play in use, something does have to be done to make the competition increase between the large teams and the smaller teams.

Incorporating a salary cap will fix all of John Lindholm's worries, but at first make the salary cap large enough for the teams to keep all their players as of right now. But, slowly lower the cap, slow enough so that the teams have time to pay off all of their expensive players current contracts without going bankrupt. Continue to lower it year by year until the playing field levels and go from there. They might have to increase it once it gets to that point to accommodate for the high salaries of certain high dollar players, or those players might just have to take a pay cut, but overall this way of applying a salary cap based solves all money and legal issues brought up by John Lindholm in "The Problem with Salary Caps Under European Law: The Case Against Financial Fair Play". 

The Union of European Football Association should change the Financial Fair Play Rule into an American style salary cap based transfer market/wage budget. Although it would require a lot of work and it would not happen overnight, changing to an American style salary cap transfer market/wage budget would help even out the competition between the large and the small clubs. It would also help spread the talent throughout the transfer market and make the market more interesting. Overall I think that even though it is going to take time and money that changing to an American style salary cap is the best option for the players, clubs, fans, and The Union of European Football Association themselves in the long run. 

