UEFA president proposes a wage cap in football

In a leafy suburb of Ljubljana, Ceferin outlined his proposal, saying: “In future, we will have to take into serious consideration the possibility of limiting clubs’ budgets for players’ wages,”

“The wealthiest clubs are only getting richer and the gap between them and the rest is getting bigger.”

The Slovenian did note that the richest clubs would naturally be against the idea: “Those who have the most money are the strongest and have the best connections in the media,” he said. 

But he was adamant that “If we succeed, it will, in my opinion, be a historic change.”

This is not the first time a salary cap has been suggested in football and in reality, many fans are in favour of such a move. However, is it really feasible?

It would be very hard to convince the richest clubs in the world to give up their advantage.

It would be a big ask to put in place a complete salary cap in football, though there are already a number measures in place to ensure that money is not abused. These come in the form of the Salary Cost Management Protocol (SCMP), which limits League Two clubs to spending 60% of their turnover on wages and League One clubs 55% and at a higher level, Financial Fair Play (FFP), which limits how much a club is allowed to lose over a set time period.

Though in reality, these measure work against what a salary cap aims for, these measures ensure that richer clubs have an advantage, whereas a salary cap aims to give a greater competitive balance to a league. Despite the name, FFP is not really aimed at levelling the playing field so to speak, but rather at avoiding clubs from going into receivership.

However, there a myriad of problems with the introduction of a salaray cap, namely, if it was introduced by UEFA, there is no guarantee that it would apply at a domestic level, there would be even more cases of players heading to countried based on their tax laws rather than footballing reasons and all the legal work that would have to go into such an agreement.

According to an expert quoted in 'The Guardian', the comments from Ceferin are just "currying favour with people from smaller leagues" and that "if you take what he’s (Ceferin) saying at face value, a hard cap with a few exceptions, practically speaking it wouldn’t be possible. It’s nonsense to imagine."

So despire Ceferin's claims, it appears that we are no closer to a universal salary cap in football.