A-League salary cap punishes success, writes Mark Bosnich

IF the traffic’s not bad, it’s only a short drive from Olympic Park to Parramatta — just 11km separating the Wanderers’ temporary home from their original one while it’s rebuilt.

But on the day of the second derby of the season, it must feel like the club has moved light years away — not just from its home of the past four seasons but also the success that was built there.

It’s a situation made even more painful by watching their opponents on Saturday, Sydney FC, conquer all before them to be so far ahead at the top of the league.

Just a few months ago at the end of last season it was Western Sydney chasing the glory, and theirs is a case that makes me more certain than ever that we need a radical overhaul of the A-League.


A-League salary cap punishes success, writes Mark Bosnich.
In short, it’s time for the salary cap to go, and for free-market economics to hold away in Australia’s football competition. Let me explain why it is that the Wanderers are sitting outside the top six, and why scrapping the cap would stop them and others like Adelaide from being penalised for being strong. It’s very simple.

Eighteen months ago Tony Popovic ripped up his squad and started again, just as he seems to do every year. But in that case he brought in players who he needed to play a new brand of football, and they were highly successful in that enterprise.

But the problems for teams that do well here come months down the line, when successful players in successful teams seek rewards for their achievements. Popovic made offers to the stylish Spanish duo Alberto and Andreu at the end of last season that were limited by how much space he had in the cap. Both players elected to leave in search of better deals elsewhere.

Then cashed up Asian leagues came calling for some of the club’s best servants in Mark Bridge and Nikolai Topor-Stanley, offering them deals far in excess of what they can earn here. Another two bricks were ripped from the citadel.

The same thing happened to Adelaide United, where the hangovers from the Grand Final party had barely abated in May before suitors came calling for their best players.

Other A-League teams cherrypicked some, while European and Asian clubs stole others — all of them able to pay the market rate.


Wanderers coach Tony Popovic applauds his team from the sidelines.
In essence, we’re penalising success. Teams in the A-League don’t even get prize money, and then — to add insult to injury — the competition’s rules make it nigh-on impossible to keep their squads together when they do well.

It’s true we have a new TV deal, thanks to Fox Sports, with $350m to be invested over the next six years and more (hopefully) to come from a free to air station.

But while some of that will feed into the cap, clubs have already made clear they want a large proportion for themselves to pay for their day to day business.

Only Australia and America have a salary cap, and it’s not appropriate here any more. The argument was always that it creates a level playing field and prevents the rich clubs dominating.

Well guess what — we already have an equalisation device by virtue of the fact that six of our ten teams get into the finals.

What the cap does is penalise success on so many levels, especially when coupled with the ban on transfer fees between A-League clubs. In their rush to make sure ours was a balanced competition, its architects have ended up stifling innovation.


The Wanderers need to reboot their campaign on Saturday night.
REBOOT NEEDED

While it’s true that the salary cap is a major reason for where Western Sydney are, the brutal truth is that football demands success — especially at a club like the Wanderers that has become accustomed to winning ways.

From the beginning I’ve been a great champion of Paul Lederer, a brilliant chairman and passionately engaged with his club. He’s a demanding owner, as he should be.

But I’m from western Sydney, and there are rumblings among the supporters — about the temporary new home, the results, the coaching staff. In the end it’s the coach who carries responsibility for the results, whatever the circumstances.

That’s why Western Sydney, and Tony Popovic, really need a win in the derby on Saturday. With half the season to go, there’ll be no better opportunity to reboot their campaign.

Originally published as Bosnich: Salary cap punishes success

http://www.perthnow.com.au/sport/football/a-league/teams/western-sydney/aleague-salary-cap-punishes-success-writes-mark-bosnich/news-story/70269ec0c31679b74291c3cde9034b88

He gets it

Bozza looking after the big cities. At least Merrick's got our back.

To be utterly frank, the big cities are the only ones that actually matter. People watch their games and constantly talk about them on social media whilst media eyes are constantly fixed on these clubs. They are the ones that TV actually want to show, they are the only ones that aren't too cheap to embrace the Champions League properly and they drive the majority of interest in the competition.

To restrict their level of squad investment and future success is self-defeating nonsense. 

This. It doesnt get more "this" than this.

If the big cities were all that mattered, then the NSWPL and VPL would have been huge and there'd have been no need to have a national comp.

Here comes the cavalry

They serve a purpose by making up numbers in the league. 

I would argue that they're more important than that but you acknowledge they actually do matter at least. Progress :laugh:

Bless your bleeding heart. Makes me cry like a bitch. 

Bozza on point yet again. None of your points are relevant. 

Lovin bozza lately! Tellin it like it is! 

what an arrogant statement. All teams matter not just the Melbourne and Sydney teams

They matter but not as much as the big teams. Otherwise FTA stations would be killing themselves just so they can show Central Coast vs Newcastle 

Pretty much. It's also why the league is generally in a better shape when the big 4 are top of the league compared to when it's CCM, Perth and Newcastle there instead.

No argument there. They also want competitive and entertaining fixtures. How do they fill 27 (possibly more after expansion) fixtures with those sorts of fixtures involving those 4 teams when they're significantly better than the other 6/8?

That's bs mcj

Gosford Newcastle and Adelaide would have the same right as everyone else to spend.

That's bs scott.

Just like how those 3 franchises have the ability to buy 3 expensive out of cap marquees but don't.

?

How is Adelaide being cheap Melbourne or Sydney's fault?

It's not "their fault".

The whole opinion piece is rubbish:

1. The argument that Adelaide is at the bottom because the cap prevented them from keeping players is rubbish. It could well be the same for WSW but I don't pay that much attention to them. I do know Topor-Stanley was here at the start of the season and Poppa didn't want him. 
2. Letting teams spend as much as they want on players somehow encourages innovation is rubbish. If anything, the cap encourages innovation in other areas.
3. The finals being an "equalisation device" is rubbish. Adelaide have made the finals every year since 2012 and it's in no way something to get excited over.

Ok jules the entire planet is wrong... generations of football is wrong... and youre right.

Always remember, we're special and Australia is different.

Lol. Theyre never gonna let us forget :P

The 4+1 rule is equalization enough to stop the fear of a Bayern-esque monopoly. 

Jules

If there were 2 leagues a NSW Vic league and a Qld WA SA league I know which one I would watch.

Yet more people watch the A-league than all 5 of those combined. Funny about that.

Same here.

I mean its not like the best clubs in the history of the game in Aus arent from vic and nsw anyway...

The cap doesn't punish success, poor recruitment does

But the cap hinders good recruitment

It makes it harder but at least there aren't teams blindly throwing money at players and paying them way more than what there worth.

It does punish success

When a team wins, the value of its best players go up. The team can't afford to keep the players under the cap so they have to cut

You cant have watched much of the A League if you haven't seen this

It also punishes progress. There is often a correlation between the quality (perceived or otherwise) of a player and the amount of money they get. Maybe the FFA should have a salary cap. $50k for a CEO, $35k for an accountant. Lets test their "creativity" and "innovation" and see what they can come up with

And its not as if the metrics are good. Its not like we are choosing between a league with P/R / no salary cap, or a league with a $600m-$700m TV deal with games rating 300k-400k. Doing things the Australian way for a game built on conformity and all inclusiveness has given us no advantage than had we simply built a competitive football league

Transfer fees would help with inflating the local players wages.

The best A-League players either go to Europe or the J League or K League regardless of where a team finishes.

Exactly, and it will continue to happen whether there is a salary cap or not.

But without a salary cap clubs would have some hope of matching(or getting near) some overseas offers.

I don't think all that would change too much removing the salary cap.

We would see a few better/more expensive marquees but our clubs still won't be able to compete with bigger leagues around for the top shelf. 
and you would probably see the better current A-League players migrate towards the bigger clubs whilst the smaller clubs will rely more on NPL/Youth players(which would be better for our overall pool of players.)

Your posts reek of - we put a dumb/anomalous rule in place, (that for eg. Table tennis uses....and isnt used anywhere else in world football).... and now youre trying to convince people that its a good idea .

Essentially, the "advantages" of a salary cap are irrelevant....same goes for any other stupid rule thats crowbarred into our game, that doesnt belong there in the first place. It simply doesnt belong there. Thats the point here. Sure the cap causes all kinds of problems and anomalies...and fyi thats why it shouldn't be there.

The cap works fine. Don't fix something that ain't broke.

Our league is broken partly bc of this anomalous rule that doesnt belong there. Go follow afl if you like their rules so much. 

How is the league broken because of the salary cap?

Do you actually watch the a league soccer competition? 

Why would that be better for our overall pool of players?

Because the best are playing with the best and developing an understanding. This translates to when they play for the shokkazoos. 

That's the opposite of improving the overall pool of players and the best still aren't going to be playing here in the A-league.

We have nothing in common with these leagues either. 

There is no international talent pool these leagues can recruit from for one, unlike Association Football. 

Melbourne City and a couple of other teams like Sydney, WSW, and MVFC could bring some top caliber players into the A League. The more that they spend, the better quality of the players they will entice and recruit. 

How that is a bad thing is beyond me. 

I think you quoted the wrong post. Anyway basketball is almost as huge as football and there is a massive international talent pool of players. Rugby League and Union also have international talent pools and have capped leagues. Ice Hockey is another.

I've already asked why you think they'll get better (I assume international) players without a cap? They have a marquee rule already and this is who they have:
Victory: Berisha, Bozanic
City: Fornaroli, Colazo
WSW: Martinez
Sydney: Holosko, Bobo

All perfectly decent players but are any of those that much better than some of the non-marquee visa players? Maybe Fornaroli and Berisha but they came here within the salary cap.

Where it's damaging is that City and the others will take the good Australian players from the clubs with a smaller wage bill. A bunch of inexperienced kids and NPL players are going to have a tough time being "organised" enough to win anything.

Let's be honest here.

The above are not really Marquees because the FFA calls them so. Fornaroli for instance was a washout from the Greek Super League. he couldn't take a trick there and here is is all of a sudden a marquee, which in my opinion says a lot about the standard of our league. 

Sorry that's not how the marquee works though it's easy to make that mistake because that's how it was intended to be. Marquees can be anyone the club wants them to be, they're essentially just players whose wages aren't included in the cap.

The only spot that FFA has any proper say over is the guest player which is the one that Tim Cahill is signed on.

I agree, the standard of the league is mid-tier at best but it's quite entertaining and I love my Reds. However, the cap being removed isn't going to make even the richest teams FIFA Club World Cup contenders.  It's going just going to lower competitiveness in our own league and related consequences.

Well that just makes it worse. 

If we can't afford to buy some stars, just make a marquee out of anyone that you just want to retain. 

We need some players like David Villa, not make a marquee out of the Berisha's and Fornaroli's. 

So scoring 29 goals in 33 games is not worthy of marquee status?

Probably in the A league, which is the problem.

In the Greek Super League he didn't even get a lot of time on the field let alone score goals, and he was dropped. 

This to me indicates we need to raise our standards. 

Makes me wonder about kiwi messi... i wasnt initially gung-ho on bringing him back - especially instead of signing diamanti...

How he can dissappear into obscurity in europe...and how he kills it in the hal...makes me a little skeptical about how our non existent defenses stack up against european defenses tbh and the true mark of his abilities. One things for sure. He does kill it in the hal. 

A League teams would get demolished playing even mediocre European sides.

If there was something to play for. A friendly doesn't count because none of the teams will risk injuries to their stars over a silly backyard match.  

This is where my comment on growing the overall talent pool comes from. They may not win anything but they gain experience and are given an opportunity sooner that may not have came about with a salary cap.  
At the moment you have younger player stuck on the bench because a salary cap is spreads the talent evenly. Remove the salary cap and you will end up with the bigger clubs buying the more experience and 'proven' player from the smaller clubs which in turn pushes out the younger player from the bigger clubs who go looking for game time at the smaller clubs. 
Throw in transfer fees(which you would assume goes hand in hand with removing the cap) and it becomes more beneficial for the smaller clubs to play their own products as opposed to signing the journeyman that we see float from club to club each transfer period.