[dst]

I think they only fair thing to do is introduce salary cap.

Platini might be anti-English or not but I'm sure he's more appalled by Madrid's spendings than Manchester's, just like every other football fan in the world that does not support the former.

[Zed.D]

Salary cap is the best solution. but I guess Kurt would still object!

[kurtsimonw]

I think some people are really missing the point on the 'big 4' in England. WHy are they known as the big 4? Because of their billionnaire owners? No. They were all CL clubs before all of their respective takeovers, so that's not the reason. The irony in Platini's ideas is that he, as head of UEFA, is essentially the reason that football, in England at least, is the way it is. Our big 4 are so far ahead of everyone else for the revenue they get in the CL. They make more money for ualifying, then they have a biger transfer budget because of this, which then helps them qualify for the CL again and so on. If UEFA weren't so happy in giving millions and millions to these clubs, while giving UEFA cup teams pretty much nothing in order to compete with CL clubs, the gap will widen. This is the first way of handling it and stopping the same teams doing well over and over, but will he do anything about it? Will he f***.

Salary cap? It's impossible unless every league in World football has the same cap, otherwise some leagues would hold an advantage over others, also, the cap would have to be set at whatever the current highest wage bill in World football is, as it would be unfair to force clubs to sell players. I would be for it, but I think there's more possibility for a man to walk to the moon.

[Tennie]

Thing is, Kurt, at least in the case of the 4 big EPL clubs, all 4 are carrying huge debts. Much of the money they make on CL appearance/merchandise/what have you is spent paying their loans. So profit is there but it's relative. If they were joint stock companies, the shareholders wouldn't get much in dividends.

[kurtsimonw]

You missed my point about the pre-ownership thing. These were all CL teams before the wreckless spending began. Also, as these are CL teams now and earn more money.. they'd be able to spend more than any other teams in the league evn if new rules were bought in, I don't see how it changes anything.

One thing that annoys me is the debt issue and the owners wealth. If debt is your arguement, then Man City will become the greatest team in World football within a few years, because they will have no debt, but will be able to spend at a level that nobody else can match. You can even look at Milan, why do they not have debt? Because they have a welathy owner, if it weren't for Silvio's money, we would certainly be in debt, we're just fortunate to have him bail us out. The only difference between us and, say, Chelsea, is that Roman hasn't cleared the debts yet.

On a side issue, slightly away from football, I wonder what the governments opinion on this would be? Banks are already low on money as it is, surely losing hundred-million loans from football clubs would further harm banks and the country?

[Dzeko]

Real Madrid's attempt to initiate Project Galactico Part II with the £56m capture of Kaka may trigger the biggest summer spending spree in the history of football.

A list of players linked with moves reads like a who's who of the modern game: Cristiano Ronaldo, David Villa, Franck Ribery, Cesc Fabregas, Samuel Eto'o, Sergio Aguero, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Carlos Tevez and plenty more besides.

Real, with Florentino Perez - the man who ushered in their first Galactico era at the start of the century - back as president, will not stop at Kaka as they seek to challenge Barcelona for Spanish supremacy next season.

Closer to home, the likes of Manchester City and Chelsea are set to stretch their financial muscles as their multi-billionaire owners showcase their recession-proof wealth.

One of Britain's leading sports business professors told BBC Sport he believes it is these three clubs that could prove to be the catalyst for a summer of spend, spend, spend.

"Potentially, I can see individual records being broken and the total spent by Premier League clubs being broken too," said Dr Simon Chadwick, from the Coventry University Business School.

"But I don't think it will be spent very widely. It will be highly skewed by two or three clubs and you are looking in particular at Man City and Chelsea.

"What is even more important, though, is what happens at Real Madrid. That will have a cascading effect on the rest of football - especially in Spain and in England, the two big leagues in Europe."

Returning as president at the Santiago Bernabeu after a three-year absence, Perez had hardly settled back into his old chair before reasserting his authority on the game.

His pursuit of Kaka, along with his stated desire to "work to bring Ronaldo to Real" and repeated links with Valencia's Villa, Manchester United's Nemanja Vidic and Liverpool's Xabi Alonso have fired an early warning shot of supreme confidence.

This, after all, is the man who, in four consecutive summers starting from 2000, took Luis Figo, Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo and David Beckham to the capital of Spain for a combined fee of about £132m.

Real have not only endured their first empty-handed season since 2006, but had to sit and watch arch rivals Barcelona claim an unprecedented treble of La Liga, Spanish Cup and the Champions League while winning hearts and minds for their style of football.

Perez wants what Barca have got, and the billionaire construction magnate with vast independent wealth will stop at nothing to get what he wants.

City, who tried an audacious swoop for Kaka in January and have been linked with a move for Real goalkeeper Iker Casillas among plenty of others, have even more money than the Madrid club to play with.

But they are not yet competing at the same level as their more illustrious European neighbours, as their differing levels of success in the chase for Kaka appear to have illustrated.

POTENTIAL WORLD XI OF TRANSFERS
1. Gianluigi Buffon (Juventus)
2. Maicon (Inter Milan)
3. Yuri Zhirkov (CSKA Moscow)
4. Nemanja Vidic (Man Utd)
5. Ricardo Carvalho (Chelsea)
6. Cesc Fabregas (Arsenal)
7. Cristiano Ronaldo (Man Utd)
8. Kaka (AC Milan)
9. David Villa (Valencia)
10. Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Inter)
11. Franck Ribery (Bayern)
Subs: Joleon Lescott, Xabi Alonso, Carlos Tevez, Sergio Aguero, Samuel Eto'o


The challenge for City owner Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan is to turn a side that finished 10th in the Premier League into one that can qualify for the Champions League - with no expense spared.

Spurs boss Harry Redknapp has tasted at first-hand City's phenomenal financial muscle as his bid for Gareth Barry was easily trumped by the Eastlands outfit.

"I tried to sign Gareth, we made a decent offer and Liverpool were prepared to make a big offer too," said Redknapp.

"But we have both been blown out of the water by Man City. They offered a far bigger transfer fee and are giving the lad much bigger wages. We could not get near."

Football agent Barry Silkman expects City to carry on spending money like it is no object throughout the summer.

"When you talk about Manchester City, a club with a massive amount of money, for them it's of no consequence how much they spend," Silkman told BBC Sport.

"It's irrelevant if the money they spend is 'worth it' too, because they will just pay whatever it takes to get the player they want.


"Other English clubs are going to really struggle to buy from the continent this summer because the pound is so poor against the Euro, but that won't affect City in the slightest.

"They have a bottomless pit and they can go and get who they want without posturing. They need to as well because right now they are five or six world-class players short of competing near the top end of the table."

Silkman expects the poor value of the pound to have a positive impact on the volume of transfers completed between English clubs this summer.

"This will be the biggest internal transfer window ever, no doubt about it," he added. "There will be a lot more deals and much bigger ones than we've seen for a while too.

"The pound is struggling so much that clubs are finding it hard to even pay a player's salary from abroad and so the established players from Europe we've seen coming over in the last few years might dry up."

So, can we expect a trickle effect throughout English football, with Manchester City, Chelsea and Real Madrid the catalyst for a summer of spending throughout the leagues?

"I don't think so," says BBC Sport pundit Pat Nevin. "It's the level below these clubs that will be the most interesting to watch because it's the most unpredictable.

"I wouldn't be surprised if we see transfer fees on the whole at this level - we're talking average Premier League teams - go down and I'm not convinced these clubs will be involved in many massive deals any more either.

"Go down another level to the Championship or the Scottish Premier League and I think we'll see just how little bargaining power these clubs have at the moment.

"It's a different world to City and Chelsea. Those owners just don't get affected by economic downturns like most other businessmen - they aren't working within normal economic parameters."

(IMG:http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45868000/gif/_45868255_prem_clubs_spend_466gr.gif)

Dan Jones, the editor of Deloitte's Annual Review of Football Finance, takes it a step further. He believes the record spent by English clubs in a summer transfer window - £530m in 2008 - is not going to be broken.

"I'd be surprised if it was," said Jones. "We're expecting it to be busy, but possibly not record-breaking.

"Part of the reason for that is because there has been such a lot of activity in the last couple of windows - though you have to be careful of the Man City, Chelsea and Real Madrid factor.

"They could kickstart something like Roman Abramovich did when he first arrived at Chelsea six years ago, we have seen it happen before.

"I stand to be corrected by the end of August, but I don't think there will be more spent than last year. Probably not far off the same, but not more than."

Messrs Perez, Sheikh Mansour and Abramovich may have something to say about that. Watch this space.

Additional reporting by Sam Lyon

[Tennie]

Regarding the side issue, Spain's finance minister was very publicly critical of the two big loans Spanish banks made to Real Madrid to finance the Kaka and Ronaldo transfers while the same banks are unable/unwilling to make loans to small businesses.

[kurtsimonw]

I'll just wait and see what happens. When Milan sign a player or 2 for big money, I'll see how many people criticise the club for over-spending big and being unfair on teams that can't afford it. I doubt there will be many.

[LaPalma]

I think some people are really missing the point on the 'big 4' in England. WHy are they known as the big 4? Because of their billionnaire owners? No. They were all CL clubs before all of their respective takeovers, so that's not the reason. The irony in Platini's ideas is that he, as head of UEFA, is essentially the reason that football, in England at least, is the way it is. Our big 4 are so far ahead of everyone else for the revenue they get in the CL. They make more money for ualifying, then they have a biger transfer budget because of this, which then helps them qualify for the CL again and so on. If UEFA weren't so happy in giving millions and millions to these clubs, while giving UEFA cup teams pretty much nothing in order to compete with CL clubs, the gap will widen. This is the first way of handling it and stopping the same teams doing well over and over, but will he do anything about it? Will he f***.

Salary cap? It's impossible unless every league in World football has the same cap, otherwise some leagues would hold an advantage over others, also, the cap would have to be set at whatever the current highest wage bill in World football is, as it would be unfair to force clubs to sell players. I would be for it, but I think there's more possibility for a man to walk to the moon.

Chelsea? The first time they ever participated in CL was in 1999 I think. Of course CL football is very important for a club, but it isn't the UEFA money that gives ManU, Chelsea etc such an advantage over other teams. It's their respective owners. Teams like Ajax, PSV, Bayern or Lyon get that money as well. They're not in a position to pay 40 million for one player. I agree with you though that the downfall of the UEFA Cup is not a good development. it was much more prestigious in the early 90ies.
And as for Roman bailing out Chelseas debts. It'll never happen. He's not in the situation to splash out that much money. Same for ManU. Why should they pile on such a huge debts when they actually plan on spending their own money?
Sometimes you simply have to protect people/clubs from themselves.

[Protagonist]

Platini is addressing a serious issue here, you can't discard it. He is not pointing fingers at the EPL nor Serie A, he is addressing the whole of Europe. He has been pressing for such matter for years now, to level the playing field so that entrants into the UEFA competitions from Bulgaria or Sweden and such, could maybe get a chance to leave at least a footprint in these competitions at some point.

He could state certain examples, such as Real Madrids extravagant touches this summer. Manchester City are not far behind. Abramovic, Moratti, Perez, Berlusconi, Laporta. All these people from the top tier of football have in a way or another raised the prices for everyone else over the past years. I don't get these people, it is like they want to break the salary per week record and jump to break the transfer record. Swaying back and forth, this will only make it harder for the mid-to-lower table teams, they would never really stand a chance, as they don't have Abramovic, nor Berlusconi, Moratti nor perez.

What Manchester United have done, Liverpool, Inter, Barcalona, Real Madrid, Milan, Bayern Munich will do is remain the pillars of European football. Yet leveling the playing field would ignite a bigger response, where teams from Eastern Europe might actually stand a chance to qualify to at least the last 16 of UEFA competitions.


It is a good proposal, but I doubt Platini would disobey Blatter (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

This post has been edited by Protogonist: Jul 22 2009, 08:30 PM

[LaPalma]

I don't want to be mean towards Eastern european clubs but I always think most of them are boring and lack the charme of clubs like Ajax, Juve, ManU. I DO like Dynamo Zagreb and Red Star though.

[Protagonist]

That is exactly what my point LaPalma, and the reason behind it is strikingly obvious. We all prefer La Liga and the Premier League to the Sofia derby - if any.

[LaPalma]

I have to admit I'm not a huge fan of the spanish league, though I get what you mean. But isn't the much more interesting question why teams like Lefski Sofia Or Wisla Krakow aren't as appealing as Ajax, Madrid, OM. I think it's the reputation such teams gained in the past 40 years. I mean, even teams like ManU, Bayern Ajax were small clubs once. Plus, I've grown up with those teams being at the top, so I'm not that familiar with football and football culture in eastern Europe no matter what players they have to offer.

[Protagonist]

I am guessing everyone on Milanfan could agree with that those are the more reputable teams. And that those teams will remain always, by their own right, as the top tier clubs in European football.

Yet the transformation will take time, it would start with mid table teams in the top five leagues in Europe, as they currently have a world-wide audience. From then on, Eastern European teams will get the chance to showcase on the UEFA front, when such teams start making noises in UEFA competitions, that is when their leagues as a whole would start to get the attention accordingly, and hence build up a reputation.