Welcome back to the What If series. Today, unlike last time, we delve into a hypothetical question that is only... hypothetical. It will never happen, so don't fret, don’t stress, and take a look around. In the game of football, sports finance is managed in a very intricate and fragile way that is set up to fit the game and its rules. First of all, what is sports finance? It's really just the general category which includes specific topics such as trades, free agency, drafts, player marketing and the like.
The big question today is what happens if the American sport of football and the World renowned sport of fútbol swap their sports economies. But before one can view the repercussions, one must understand the integral roles sports finance plays in the NFL, and world soccer.
First of all, the NFL, the biggest American football organization in the world has 32 teams. Every year, there is a draft, and professional teams can select players who have graduated from college. The draft has 7 rounds, and each team has one pick. HOWEVER, teams can trade away their picks. There are three things that can be traded in football, but the target is always the same. Draft picks, players, and money. On rare occurrences, coaches are traded too.
On the other hand, professional soccer is a bit different due to its heavy usage of money, and its lack of draft picks. First of all, the main way of acquiring a player is by paying a transfer fee to the player’s current club. Afterwards, any interested club would enter into negotiations with the player to determine wages, bonuses, and the role of the player. For example, PSG paid Barcelona 222 million euros for Neymar and then settled for weekly wages of €600,000 (without tax). The second difference, as mentioned before, is the lack of trading draft picks. The reason for this is because soccer has no drafts. To sign young stars, clubs invest money in scouts who help hire young talents for the youth academy.
Furthermore, there is no college soccer in Europe. There are competitive leagues, but they are not linked to club soccer. In fact, if you play college soccer, your chances of playing professional soccer are much lower than players selected into youth academies.
However, there is one slight similarity between the two sports: Free agency. In football, a team can cut a player if they haven't been performing well, or if they are injured and ineligible to play. If they do so, then there is the waiver wire. The waiver wire allows other teams in the NFL to place claims on a player that has been cut. There is an order, and it matches the NFL draft order. If a player is not claimed within the waiver wire deadline, they become a free agent and wait to be approached by a team. In soccer, a team can cut a player as well for injury reasons or poor performance and attitude. How it works is that a team can cut a player without resigning them. However, unsatisfied players can also do this by running don their contract without resigning and then signing with another team.
Now that all the ground rules and laws have been explained, let the theorizing and synthesis begin (aka the crazy stuff). Let's start at the beginning, with the draft. For a draft to be implemented in soccer, players would go from their U-18 teams to the draft. What this means is that after they declare for the draft, they no longer play for the club they had in the Under 18 league. They might go back, but until drafted, they are part of a collection of youngsters that are "club-less." However, in the draft, they can be picked to play for any professional team, including the same club they were once part of. Meanwhile, football in the USA would have to utterly eliminate college football and NFL teams would have to open up youth academies and set up extensive scouting networks all over the country. This swap opens up some interesting prospects for Soccer but would prove detrimental for football.
The second swap to discuss is the trade rule flip. Imagine if in soccer, clubs could trade coaches for players. Managers play major roles in soccer, and many clubs with countless stars need a bright manger rather than another star. For example, Juventus is a phenomenal club, but is lacking with Massimiliano Allegri. Imagine if they traded one of their countless stars to Manchester City for tactical mastermind Pep Guardiola. This possibility would mean countless intrigues and possibilities for the soccer world. Meanwhile, football would be empty without being able to trade players and draft picks. The final category to hypothesize about is money and wealth.
First of all, if the NFL had the wealth of international soccer, players like AB and OBJ would be getting paid in the hundreds of millions. However, overall this means that NFL teams would be able to expand worldwide, and recruit star talent from all over the world. After all, Americans aren't the only ones who can catch. Meanwhile, soccer would economically crash with the insignificant sums of money from the NFL and the sport would all but disappear.
Keep in mind that although all these situations are hypotheticals, they also do provide some interesting mysteries that could benefit a sport. For example, the NFL draft, but in soccer. On the flip side, some of these cases could damage a sport, such as the NFL's minor wealth going to soccer. All in all, any such swaps would almost never happen due to the large scale that both these sports operate upon today, but that doesn't mean that we can't dream.
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