The End of Transfer Fees

In american football they have no transfer fees, but use a system of 'trading' players. Whilst this seems to me to be a bit fairer than just pinching who you want for peanuts, this has to be worse for the players involved as many of them will end up being 'traded' away against their wishes...

Unlikely that it would get legs as clubs aren't paying the money for the players per se as much as they are the contract, ergo the bosman rule.

American sports makes it more difficult for players to move not easier. Football has a special dispensation from treaty of Rome and European employment laws. UEFA and FIFA saw something like this coming and planned for it. Not going to happen.

However the players union is leading its members up the garden path. Abolishing transfer fees will only make a very small number of players very rich. Most of the players would automatically lose the protection of their contracts. Those players are protected because they have an intrinsic value to the the club. Why should a club honour a contract for a player who isn't performing? In real life contracts are terminated and the only compensation people get is based on the number of years of service. Footballers are not going to enjoy being treated like the rest of us one little bit.

If this is introduced, I think one of the best ways has got to be having a cap on the number of players allowed at a club and to keep that cap pretty low. That way one team can't hoard everyone and if they wanted to get a new player they'd have a big deterrant in having to pay off a player's contract to make room for someone else.

Something could also be introduced to stop the small clubs getting totally screwed over.

An option is for there to be some kind of (large) tax on all clubs in the higher leagues, where the money is flowed down throughout all the leagues in the country, right down to the grass roots level. Each club would then get a certain allotted amount of money based on the number of players who have left and moved to higher ranking teams. Thus the small clubs producing lots of good players who go on to play for better teams will get far more reward than small clubs who don't produce anyone.

If the European Court agrees with the idea complications will arise as it will only apply to UEFA and not to other continental bodies outside the jurisdiction of the European Court, like South America. It will only result in a skewed and confused market.

Would be an absolutely terrible idea!

Does this mean that FFP failed miserably then? Was wondering how City still spent even more than their usual selves in the summer

Great idea and I'm sorry but this really does go some way to levelling he playing field.

Only the oil clubs, Man U, Real, Barca and Bayern can afford the big transfer fees these days as anyone who throws together a good season or two if worth £25 - £30m then you have wages on top.

If transfer fees are no longer prohibitive then you will open it up to well run clubs who can scout well.

I also think in the long run wages will reduce as world football generally only has a few irreplaceable player at anyone time. Messi and Ronaldo just now beyond that no player really stands head and shoulder above the others.

If the monetary value of replacing players is reduced then quite frankly the worth of that player to the club is also reduced as so they have less bargaining power and therefore will be paid less.

Now most of you will probably be thinking, 'yeah but you will have more competition for players and this will push up the wages'.

No, if you only get the value if the remainder of the contract back then clubs will be less inclined to offer huge wages as the moment a players gets to the half way point of his contract he is no longer an asset in a business sense, he's i multi million £ liability and business folk don't like them.

The only way clubs can keep the value up is offer new contracts every year to the ones they want but they will end up paying over the market value for a similar asset.

Also if clubs can't balance the books by selling players for inflated prices then they have only one other means of doing it, reducing wages.

A new rule in this manner would almost introduce an unofficial wage cap that only oil clubs would violate.

The end up would be clubs that are actually well run and not a game that is in £100's or £1000's of billion in debt.

trojan are you an accountant or something? You make some very interesting financial points that I would never have even considered.

"the moment a players gets to the half way point of his contract he is no longer an asset in a business sense, he's i multi million £ liability"

so you mean if someone 'bought' the player at that point, the 'selling' club will have spent more on the player in wages than they have recouped and so he's a liability?

I hadn't considered that. So instead of keeping the player and constantly renewing and slightly increasing their salary each year, a club would instead let the player leave and get a replacement in on a lower salary?

I can see bigger clubs doing that, because a lot of players would be willing to play for them, but smaller clubs are still going to lose their star players with little reward.

If you are right and wages in general come down, then the smaller clubs will be able to balance their books better - however - they will have no incentive what so ever to invest in youth players as they can't get the odd £1million here or there from selling them on

And in what way would this stop the biggest clubs just stockpiling all the best players and the gap between them and the slightly less glamorous clubs widening even further when they take their star players?

e.g. in this scenario, Bale would have left for virtually nothing to RM, Suarez will leave for virtually nothing RM as would any other top, top player in the PL or any other league who doesn't already play for the Man Us or FCBs of this world.