Platini calls for salary cap
Michel Platini calls for a limit to clubs' spending
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Monday, 14, Jul 2008 10:03
Uefa have revealed some of the information contained in a confidential document handed to European affairs ministers in Brest last week by Uefa President Michel Platini, which called on the EU to endorse a number of regulations which could eventually lead to Europe-wide salary cap for professional footballers.
The document Platini has handed over also calls for a ban on the transfer of players under-18, a quota for foreign players and a crackdown on financial mismanagement.
In a keynote speech to the council of ministers for European affairs Platini spoke of the need to have “the means to develop better control of clubs' spending” through limiting a club's total wage bill to a fixed percentage of their income, but stated that this move would only be taken with the clubs' agreement.
William Gaillard, UEFA's communications director and Platini's special adviser said: “We know an individual salary cap would be very difficult to enforce in European law but we need to talk to the EC about clubs spending only a percentage of income on salaries.
'It could be 55%, 60%, 65% - Karl-Heinz Rummenigge [chairman of the new European Club Association] has talked recently about 50-55%.
“Michel Platini has said this is what the clubs want and we will support it but we will not enforce it unilaterally.”
In relation to the transfer of players under the age of 18 Gaillard said: “Clubs are stealing players aged 12 and 13, taking them away from their homes and then dumping them again a few years later.
“There are a lot of cases all over Europe of terrible failures of very promising players that have been transferred very early, when still children, and haven't developed well and their career has been ended.”