London: Is imposing a salary cap on teenage footballers workable? Certainly, the Premier League is acutely aware of the issue and has already debated its merits — and its legality.
The “too much, too young” culture has become a growing concern given the riches and temptations in the game and the capacity for it all to go horribly wrong, with Liverpool rightly applauded last week after it was revealed that they had introduced an academy wage cap.
No longer would the club pay a basic salary of more than £40,000 (Dh180,433) a year for a 17-year-old first-season professional.
Those wages will only be topped up by bonuses for under-23 or first-team appearances or while on loan in the lower divisions.
Southampton and Tottenham Hotspur have enforced similar policies while other clubs, such as Crystal Palace, Everton and Stoke City, are broadly in agreement as part of an overall understanding that there needs to be greater pastoral care — including formal educational qualifications — for these young adults.
James Ward-Prowse has come through the system at Southampton, as did Luke Shaw and Calum Chambers. All had their wages capped. The club feel that it is part of the overall ‘holistic’ approach that needs to be taken.
It may mean losing some players who chase the money but it will also gain some who want a more rounded upbringing.
Indeed, there have been claims that the Premier League has statistics which show there is an inverse correlation between the amount of money a young player can earn and their possibility of making it as a footballer. In football, the case of Josh McEachran is often cited.
The midfielder made his debut for Chelsea aged just 17 — in 2010, in a Champions League tie — and when he turned 18 had earned a £2 million-a-year, five-year deal. That equates to £38,000 a week for an 18-year-old who then struggled to justify that billing, slipping through a series of unsuccessful loans before rebuilding his career at Brentford which, given they are a successful Championship club, is hardly a total failure but is not where McEachran was expected to be.
What is also intriguing is that while there is more money than ever in the game, and greater contracts being awarded, the average age of a player making his Premier League debut has now hit an all-time high of 22.5 years.
So, there is undoubtedly a large group who are coming through the elite system, awarded life-changing, and sometimes extraordinary, contracts, but whose chances of making it in the top flight are lower than ever or, at least, they have to wait longer.
It creates a dangerous and potentially wasteful vacuum with an added complication — which irks many clubs and has also been discussed at Premier League level — of more players being represented by family members after greater deregulation of the work of agents by Fifa.
The Premier League has pushed through its plans for a Premier League Two and the EFL Trophy to get young players more ‘competitive’ football but the jury is out. Similarly, as a body, it has discussed capping pay although more detailed talks have taken place about introducing a mandatory trust fund system.
This would be enforced with half of all the earnings from every player’s first professional contract being paid directly into a fund which they cannot get their hands on until they have reached a certain age.
It was also a proposal that was discussed by Greg Dyke’s much-derided Football Association commission which looked at a form of wage cap for players under 21 who have yet to play a certain number of Premier League games.
It sounds like an admirable idea, although it ran into immediate problems. The legal advice to the Premier League was that it could not be imposed. It meant that clubs have to decide unilaterally.
By extension, it means trying to impose a salary cap solely for young players would also fail (interestingly, though, the NFL did manage to create a ‘rookie wage scale’ in 2011). It does not mean that football clubs cannot do it.
But it appears they have to agree it between themselves or have their own policies — as Spurs, Southampton and Liverpool have done — which inevitably means they are vulnerable to other clubs not following suit.
What is so eye-catching, therefore, about the Liverpool story is whether or not their rivals decide to try to take advantage of that and what happens when the policy faces the test of a significant talent potentially being lured elsewhere.
The bottom line would seem to be a more responsible attitude needing to be adopted across the board. It is important not to just look at what hiring these young men means for the financial and sporting benefit of the club but also what it means to them and their personal development.
Clubs are highly competitive businesses, but they are also clubs with the social and community responsibilities that association carries.
So, although the Premier League believes it cannot legally enforce change it does not mean that the clubs cannot adopt this approach as best practice. Again, the problem would be whether this could be circumvented with other payments. But the clubs need to help each other to help the young men become men, and not just one or two to become stars.
