The $7k Max Transfer Fee Has To Go

It’s a known fact that the maximum an NPL club can receive for a transfer fee is $7,000. This is a restriction put in place by the FFA for whatever reason they think is good enough to justify why clubs should be short changed money.

Let’s look at it like this; if a club discovers a talented player at a young age, and decides to put time, effort and money into developing them to their potential, it is only fair they would want some remuneration when that player wants to sign a professional contract right? To the average person, of course this seems more than fair, especially as the player would be currently contracted to their NPL club.

However, in Australia an NPL team can collect a maximum of $7,000 on that player from an A-League club, or any other club they might want to sign for. This means that teams have little incentive to fully develop their players to their maximum potential, as it would be wasted money.If teams could sell their players for more, the possibilities of what they do with that transfer fee are endless. Of course a lot of clubs would reinvest that money straight back into their 1st grade side and either pay their players more, or sign better players from other NPL clubs.

However, we must assume that money would be spent on improving training facilities and equipment, paying for coaches, physios, other training personnel, the list goes on.

The clubs would be able to find and develop other young players instead of having them slip through the cracks of the footballing system in Australia. Players that can’t afford to pay for registration could be covered by the club (although that’s a whole separate issue).

In turn, the quality of the NPL would be better as more players would be getting use of the improved facilities, the A-League would be getting better quality players and ultimately, over time, the quality of our Socceroos would also increase.

If the players playing in Australia are getting better, it can only mean that football is getting better in Australia.

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