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"Football time bomb waiting to explode?"

Is there a money crisis thats just waiting to completely change football as we know and love.
Smaller clubs are already feeling the rath of having players on high wages,
they can hardly afford to pay for their own players so they can't even think about investing in new and better players.

Are the big clubs soon to also feel the strain, certaintly clubs that are relegated from the Premiership can't afford to pay the wages of thier top flite players and with the collapse of ITV digital top clubs like Arsenal ManU ect could also be heading that way.
This crisis could then spread to europe, we have already noticed this starting to happen in Spain as Real Madrid were only saved from huge debts by thier goverment bailing them out. Also in Italy Fiorentina were a top, title challenging club, now because of debt they are sitting in the lower divisions of Italy.

Will this time bomb go off?
If so will what will set it of? Another television company collapse or major cups being abolished.
Whould it spell the end to football?

I think the collapse in ITV Digital was the start of all the money crisis.
Damn TV

;-)

The sagacious one wrote:
> However a Man Utd player on £4,000 a week will still earn more
> than a Rochdale player on £4,000 through sponsorship, bonuses
> and endorsements...

That's true but besides the point. The issue here is how much the clubs pay the players, not how much the players earn. So long as the clubs don't pay the players more than they can afford to, there's no real problem with players earning ludicrous amounts of cash.

OK, my point still stands, I just picked a bad example!

Insane Bartender wrote:
> Beckham gets a million squid to show his face on a vodafone advert, it
> doesn't even get a look into the Man Utd books.

Actually it does enter the United books - the reason why it took Beckham so long to sign his contract is because of image rights, where Beckham felt that he should be given all income of adverts etc but United wanted a shared amount as his employer, they settled on a shared percentage which was not disclosed.

Sponsorships and endorsements come from third party companies though, and so won't effect club finances.

Beckham gets a million squid to show his face on a vodafone advert, it doesn't even get a look into the Man Utd books.

They have salary caps in American Football and this keeps the competiton fairly even. So it could work for the FA (though any comparison to the NFL is tenuous ).

However a Man Utd player on £4,000 a week will still earn more than a Rochdale player on £4,000 through sponsorship, bonuses and endorsements...

Most of the top clubs have agreed to follow a rule which caps player wages against club income at around 70% of income. In the Nationwide Leagues, it has been an FA ruling that they follow a similar rule for around 60% of income, though I'm not sure if this is in force yet.

In a few years what this means is that players will have to demand less in terms of wages, because clubs will have no choice but to refuse to pay their ridiculous demands.

Hopefully, in time, it will also become a UEFA ruling for all clubs in europe to structure their clubs finances in this way.

I think it's every clubs own fault if they do, I mean paying some players up to £100,000 a week is stupid. Lazio look like they could end up going down the pan as well...despite doing well in the Italian League they still own Man Utd £10m for the Stam deal!

Villa announced a loss of 8.1 Million pounds which is unusual for them. They blamed the loss on the transfer window, as they wanted to offload people like Alpay, to cut down their wage bill.

I hope that there isn't a timebomb ready to go off, as I really enjoy football and it would ruin the game.