Players union boss warns that A-League salary cap is ‘broken’ and has to go
The A-League salary capped served a purpose in the infancy of the competition, but the boss of the players’ union says it’s now time to scrap the cap.
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The A-League's salary cap is "broken" and a whole rethink of the competition's economic model is urgently needed, the boss of the players union has warned.
Armed with research showing that the A-League is becoming less competitive by the year, John Didulica has set the scene for a showdown with clubs over pay constraints that are almost unique in world football.
Just weeks after the club owners took charge of the A-League from FFA control, Didulica warned that after “the players supported the club owners in seeking the structural change the game needed”, they expected significant investment in return.
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His words come ahead of what are likely to be intensive negotiations over a long-term pay deal for the A-League and W-League to come into effect in the middle of next year, with Didulica already arguing strongly that the salary cap isn’t working as an equaliser for the league.
A new committee including representatives of the players, clubs, and FFA is currently looking at the evidence as to whether the cap is still keeping a competitive balance in the A-League.
The PFA will on Friday publish a major body of research based on interviews with more than 60 players and statistics over the A-League’s 15 seasons, showing that the number of games decided by narrow margins has fallen and the spread of points on the league table between top and bottom is wider than ever.
Writing in the report — in which 85 per cent of players believe the salary cap model needs scrapping — Didulica said the owners had a “once in a generation” chance to build a more effective model.
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On Thursday he told The Daily Telegraph that the current cap was “the worst of all possible worlds” in limiting players’ earnings and preventing clubs from cashing in on big transfer fees.
“Clubs can impose their own caps on their own spending as appropriate, they don’t need some artificial number dictated to them,” he said.
“But on the current model, cap constraints mean increasing numbers of players on short-term deals, and that means not investing in them in the hope of generating extensive transfer income.
“In the last transfer window there was about $5bn of activity, but in the last 12 months Australian clubs have made $2.7m in transfer fees.
“When the A-League started the cap made sense to show investors that clubs would be sustainable, but now they can buy two marquees for as much as they want, and have a variety of exemptions which make the whole idea of competitive balance unworkable.”