Inflation in Football: The Solution

Yesterday, I made a post about one of biggest problems in football (or soccer, if you live in the USA): inflation, in other words, the crazy transfer fees being paid at the moment. The solution is very simple: European football has to adopt the system they use in US sports. In the latter, there is a salary cap, so in order to get new players, teams have to get rid of some of their own. How do this affect the actual transfer fees being paid though?

Very simple. The teams will no longer be able to simply buy players for just cash. So they will have to trade their players in order to get new ones, as to not go over the salary cap. Therefore, the clubs will not want to spend millions and millions as they are already losing players which have a certain value. For example, the Jordan Henderson deal using this system would have maybe seen Liverpool giving up Christian Poulsen, Sortiris Kyrgiakos and maybe 1 or 2 millions (this is as long as the salaries would match up).

The other benefit this system offers is for the fans. When your team sells a star player, using, as an example, Andy Carroll minutes for the transfer deadline shuts, it's instant gratification for the team who are losing the star player. Instead of the current situation where Newcastle have to wait until this transfer window to buy a new striker, they would get maybe a few players instantly which would, as I said before, please the fans.

Yet ANOTHER benefit this system would have would be that the void between 1st and last would be much smaller. In the NBA, for example where a salary cap system is used, the void between the champions, the Dallas Mavericks and the worst team, the Minnesota Timberwolves is relatively small compared to say the gap between Man Utd and West Ham in football. There would be much more upsets if a salary cap were to be installed, as when small teams sell their star players, they get players form the big clubs in return.

However, for this system to work properly, it must be Europe wide. They have the system in the MLS, where it works well but in Europe, if they only have it in England, say, all the stars will leave the English clubs and go abroad in search of more money. This system would be so much better than the one that currently dominates European football, and it would also be way better for the fans.