International week is usually the dominant story in football when it comes along, but for the second time this season England have played second fiddle. Each time the Saturday match has been low-key - first Andorra, now Kazakhstan - and the strength of other stories has been formidable. In the run-up to the game in Barcelona, Kevin Keegan was delivering his ultimatum to Mike Ashley.
This week, the global debt crisis is producing headlines I never thought I'd see, and the possible repercussions for football are an inevitable topic of debate, with key figures such as Lord Triesman, Richard Scudamore and Michel Platini weighing in. I gave Scudamore a well deserved kicking earlier in the week. Now it's Platini's turn.
Unlike the Premier League's chief executive, the UEFA president has a point: clubs who go recklessly into debt can gain an unfair competitive advantage over those who are unwilling to take a wild gamble. However, while Scudamore is foolish enough to treat all debt as equally good, Platini is equally daft, treating all debt as equally bad. Mailbox writers have pointed out the differences between borrowing to fund a new ground, borrowing to enable a takeover, and borrowing to fund a team.
The whole approach - how much teams are in debt - is the wrong way to assess what is fair and what is not fair competition. The money Manchester United must find to pay for the privilege of being taken over by the Glazers does not give them an unfair competitive advantage. Nor do Arsenal's mortgage payments on the Emirates help them. The sensible way to make comparisons would be to look at operating profit, before interest and loan repayments, and turnover. Then you could place a club-related salary cap, related to these figures.
Clubs in France's top rugby union competition are restricted to spending 55 per cent of turnover on wages, for instance. Such a system would remove United's Glazer payments and Arsenal's Cashburden ones from the debate, placing the focus on deficit funding of football itself. It would not stop Roman Abramovich squandering Third World money on First World entertainment. Rather than Chelsea's debt spiralling towards £1billion, though, as Roman underwrites it as a loan, the Russian would have to put his money where his mouth is, say by sponsoring the youth-team physio's kit for £80million. Chelsea would be more stable as a result.
Some clubs, though, spend more than their total income on player wages, an insane and unsustainable figure. Portsmouth's spend has been reported at 90 per cent. To institute such a system across the continent, UEFA would have to establish a common set of accountancy standards.
As the Guardian's Matt Scott reported on Thursday, Deloitte say the reason why they can produce their survey of English football finance, revealing so much about the debts of Premier League clubs, is because we have such transparency in accounting practice here. It would be a major challenge to do the same across the continent as a whole, especially outside the European Union.
The burden would have to lie with the clubs - no certifiable books, no Champions League place - and the UEFA-audited set of accounts would have to be the same ones as were submitted to each country's equivalent of Companies' House. This would deter attempts to make under-the-table payments, as the deliberate falsification of accounts would be a breach of the law, not just football's rules. If Platini were to busy himself doing this, then perhaps we could get back to what should be the burning issue of the day: can Lamps and Stevie G play together?
Philip Cornwall
Your Comments
WestStand
"I would only give Philip Cornwall half a point for his latest ponderings regarding the money/debt situation. I believe he's half right about Platini, wrong in his backing of Triesman, wrong in his slating of Scudamore. FA Chairman Triesman is the modern man in a glass house, or corporate box, built in Wembley. Yet it's a box with many doors so he easily pop in or out, depending on which argument suits him at the moment. So debt is all wrong when incurred by Premier League clubs, perfectly sound when run up by Wembley, currently losing a million a month. Club prices are too steep but on the other hand there's nothing wrong with charging up to 20k upfront, then 6,790 a year for a seat in his Wembley stadium. Or in other words over 130 a week, every week, even when there's no game on. Sounds a little steep, even by Chelsea standards. The Premier League is the success story of world football. Demanded by global audiences, watched by record crowds in stadiums, homes, clubs and pubs every week. It's not cheap, quality never is. But it does leave every other league well behind, struggling to keep up. Which of course is why it's so worrying to, and feared by, Platini and Blatter. So why on earth should Triesman, Chairman of the English FA be so determined to handicap it, and hand the advantage to European leagues? The success has been made possible by investment which has led to debt. It's a business risk, open to all clubs. If clubs in the French and German leagues don't choose to take that risk, they may well fall behind. Nobody can predict the future, least of all bankers and economists. But one thing is certain, Premier League clubs deserve some credit for their enterprise. Not a two footed tackle from behind, from someone allegedly working for the good of English football. "
CheshireRed
"As a retort to the ones above asking why bigger clubs should be given an 'advantange' by salary caps; that situation is already in place you numpties. Portsmouth can outbid a Championship club, and Man United can outbid Portsmouth, and so on. Always has been that way and there's no need to alter a fair and natural pecking order across the whole structure of the football pyramid. However, what a salary cap would do is re-jig ALL the wage burdens down a little - across all clubs, thus ensuring each club remains viable and in business rather than giving all their income away to a single generation of players whose wage packets run a genuine risk of ruining the whole fucking club. I'll put it in simple terms; all the current players at all the current clubs will be at exactly the same clubs but but on say, 50% of the wages. Every player would still be at the relevant club because thats the going rate and it's the same club rate - 50%, for everyone. The only thing that would change is that clubs like Boro wouldn't be £70m in debt, Bolton wouldnt b £40+m in debt and so on. Come on, it's so simple and way overdue. "
supermatt1988
"Would salary caps affect performance bonus's and the like? Surely with the money the clubs would b saving they could offer players a larger signing on fee, payable in installments over the duration of the contract?"
chelseablue
"Salary caps would be illegal under European Union Work laws, so it's a non starter. How are Chelsea funded beyond their means? Chelsea were probably the only club (until very recently) that don't borrow money from the bank to buy players. And % of income to wages paid is unfair on every club who doesn't have a 50,000+ seater stadium as different councils react differently towards clubs in their areas. Man Utd get all the permissions ther want from their local council, whereas say Wimbledon (before they became MK Dons) couldn't get one planning application for a new stadium past Merton Council (Labour at the time, Tory now) which is the main reason they had to move to a different part of the country. There are so many holes in what all these soothesayers want, but the biggest and most important thing that football should be doing is kicking little napoleon and his corrupt mate Blatter out of football."
ComeontheRos
"What would stop a team saying to its shirt sponsors, shirt manufacturers, etc to pay the money direct to the players thus nullifying the point of a salary cap. It is a totally unworkable proposal and personally I would prefer to see the players get the money rather than shareholders. Who would you rather see getting 8 million a year Fabregas oe Hill-Wood"
billers_ctid
"Brilliant. Cornwall's on a hot streak..."
PMMyid
"90% of turnover spent on wages. Are Prtsmouth mad? No wonder they can't improve their toilet of a ground"
thierryhenry
"Not a bad article. I'm all for salary caps. it's the only way of avoiding this black hole of infinite outside funding- leading to a definate unfair advantage. it also gives hope to lower league teams that actually have a chance of competing in the top level one day. "
CheshireRed
"On the money. I emailed F365 the other day (sadly un-published by the swine of an Ed) That Platini was correct to be concerned about certain debts. The main concern should be clubs funding teams beyondtheir means - Chelsea, and spiralling wages. Implement an across all clubs wage to income ratio of 50% and within 3-5 years every single club will be solidly financially safe. Players who disagree with pay cuts of 50-75% can do one, as without a club to pay them they're out of a job. Its so simple its embarrassing, instead Platini and Blatter merely blather on about ownership and the ike, which is essentially irrelevant. "
stevegrant
"Some excellent points made in all of that. However, I do still question how any sort of salary cap would work. The only thing it would do is ensure that the big clubs were the *only* ones able to pay the top wages because they have the revenue to do so, as opposed to the smaller clubs, e.g. Portsmouth (whose non-Sky revenue would only just about sustain a Championship team), who have brought "investment" from outside to supplement their income but would then be unable to actually spend that money and subsequently fail to attract the sort of players needed to attempt to break the big 4's domination. In Portsmouth's case, I'd be more than happy for them to return to the Championship, but there are other similar-sized (or bigger) clubs who would also find themselves even worse off compared to the big 4, which would only serve to increase the already gaping chasm between the haves and the have-nots."
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