Instead of spending seven years of heavy studying to get a degree, which in turn will get you a good wage, you should apply on the FIFA agent platform to become a football agent. It will only take you a not-so-thorough background check and a 20-question multiple-choice exam (open book). Get a passing grade of 75%, pick up a young football talent, sell said talent to a club that offers you millions of dollars, and despite the rule that you can only take a 3% commission, take 10% and become rich. Now you can sit back, kick your feet up with a spicy margarita on a Caribbean beach (not a lot of taxes there), and watch all that sweet money destroy the sport that five billion people love. The rich clubs become richer, the smaller clubs are pushed out of the market, and thus, clubs people love are slowly disappearing.
Today’s financial landscape in football is like the Wild West. Clubs and agents are shooting around with ridiculous amounts of money like outlaws in a town without a sheriff. Just last year, 888 million dollars were spent on agent fees, which is an increase of 42.3% compared to the previous year. The only reason for such a high amount is the fact that football clubs pay a lot more for players than they used to. The ten most expensive transfers were all done in the last decade, with Lukaku going to Inter Milan for 115 million at number 10 and Neymar going to Paris Saint Germain for 222 million euros at number 1. Millionaires and sheikhs who decide that they want to own a football club, take over, and inject a lot of cash. Suddenly, money is not something you should worry about but something you should spend. Since there are no real rules for how much money you can pay a player, the game quickly becomes a bidding war where not the best but the richest clubs come out victorious. So, for those of you who have the ambition to take over a football club, get a sheikh to invest, and rest easy at night, you have just won football.
A way to stop this phenomenon of rich clubs outbidding the smaller traditional clubs is the salary cap. When you put a rule on how much a player can make in a year, money becomes less of a factor. You create a healthier environment where all clubs fight with more equal weapons instead of just throwing cash at players until they sign. Sure, a Saudi Arabian club could buy your player for 200 million dollars but said player wouldn’t earn more in the desert than they would at your club that plays in a better competition. So, as an athlete who loves winning, there is no reason to go play in a lesser competition for the same wage you can make at a smaller club that plays in the Champions League. Regulating how much a player can make would also put some damage control on the raging debts that football clubs accumulate. Not only do they want new players who are way too expensive, but they need to renovate their stadiums and pitches and pay employees like physicians, caretakers, and material men.
But when you spend all your millions buying new players to improve or keep your club from relegating to a lower division, you have to take loans to keep the football club running. Last year, teams in the English competition called the Premier League accumulated 1 billion pounds in debt, according to a study by the University of Liverpool. Almost 90% of the total budget goes to wages, transfers, and agent fees, which has to go down to 70% in 2026 according to new rules by UEFA (the European football agency, like FIFA, but for Europe). A salary cap could also help here, especially when a club like Brentford, located in an area of London where roughly 2,000 people live, spent 45 thousand pounds a week on wages in the 2022/2023 season. Limiting wages limits the expenditures and debts these smaller clubs make to keep up with the competition.
Football is losing what it originally was: a sport that could be played by everybody. Going to a stadium on Sunday and watching your favourite club get destroyed by an opponent that is funded by cash from rich sheikhs and billionaires is not very satisfying when you are John, the telecom operator from Yorkshire, who could barely afford the ticket in the first place since they upped the prices to make sure the club doesn’t go bankrupt. A salary cap will make sure that Real Madrid might spend 200 million dollars to buy Kylian Mbappé, but it would stop them from paying him a wage of 1.8 million a week (which is what he currently earns), of which his agent takes 180,000 dollars. Lower wages mean lower transfer fees, agent fees, and healthier finances. And when all that happens, ticket prices will eventually lower as well, giving John, the telecom operator from Yorkshire, his favourite Sunday afternoon activity back.
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