Gazidis's Soccer Salary Cap Call Is Off the Mark

Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis has this week called for the introduction of a salary cap in Premier League football, but I have serious doubts over its effectiveness.

Gazidis, formerly the deputy commissioner of Major League Soccer in the USA, said: “I think it is worth our while to investigate whether there are elements of the salary cap system, which they have in the US in NFL and baseball, which would benefit football.

“Clubs have a duty to provide more stability in our business models and some form of wage restraint is one element worth looking at. There are many ways in which it could work.”

In theory, there are two main benefits to the salary capping—promotion of parity between teams and control of clubs’ costs.

Primarily, an effective salary cap prevents wealthy teams from dominating leagues by luring all the best talent and enables each team to have the same pulling power and thus making the league more competitive.

Caps are already up and running in America in baseball and American football and in the Australian NRL and Super League with the NRL a fine example of its effectiveness with eight different winners of the grand final in the last 11 years.

However in Super League only teams times have triumphed in the last 10 years, with Leeds Rhinos, Bradford Bulls, and St Helens dominating the sport.

Whether the cap would be successful in the Premier League is debatable because transfer fees would still exist under Gazidis’ proposals and so the big guns would still be the only ones being able to break the bank for players regardless of the details of the salary cap.