Bayern winning 10. The premier league having a “big six” and only 2 different teams qualifying for UCL in years (Leicester and Newcastle). La Liga being a 2 horse race with occasional atletico. Even serie A has 5-6 good teams and every one doesn’t compete. Ligue 1 is only PSG. How do fans just accept that domestic leagues have no parity? There is no feasible way anyone can ever expect Brighton to win the PL when if they have one good year, their best players are bought. Big clubs are insanely well established and small teams can’t complete without getting bought out. It seems so unfair to me. Like, I feel like if the European scene was more fair with better parity, Dortmund should’ve been able to keep Haaland and Bellingham as their 2 starlets. The best example of this is Lewandowksi at Dortmund. He wins the league with Dortmund twice, loses to Bayern in the UCL final, and then just joins the best team. That was the best move for his career. It feels like the scene is just scene so a team like Dortmund can never compete with Bayern. Or how after Real beat Atletico in 2014, Atletico’s keeper joined Real 4 years later, and now Real remains the super team with Atletico just trying to qualify for UCL knockouts.
OP, would you support the tools necessary to introduce parity? A salary cap? Transfer restrictions? I think there is a tradeoff between absolute quality and relative parity between teams.
I personally like the Any Given Sunday model that American sports favour. I want my team to win but if we were doing it because we outspent the rest of the league, the win feels hollow.
Of course, teams don’t have 100 years of history in North America.
I think a salary cap introduced over time, across Europe. This could help make it so, teams doing well like Aston Villa could eventually start challenging for league rather than just trying to get Europa League, cuz they could keep their best players rather than needing to sell cuz a big six team made an offer to their best player and now they can’t keep their best player hostage at risk of demonizing the club.
There are many people who don’t want a salary cap since it stops people from making even more money. There are also always ways to bypass these rules. Just look at Inter Miami in the MLS or Man City tricking FFP-rules in the Prem and Champions league. There is also the problem that football is popular nearly globally and if the European team won’t pay the players the money they deserve (which could not even legally be possible) leave for leagues in the middle east. We live in a capitalist world, and sport is also capitalistic. The teams earn a lot of money, which then means that the players will make a lot of money.
And if you institute that cap in Europe the only thing that will happen is that more players would move to for example Saudi Arabia or South America.
Dividing all the revenue by 20 would also be weird in the Bundesliga since they don’t have 20 teams. And it would also make clubs lazier. Because no matter what they do in terms of commercial activities they get their money.