Lets imagine

[BrahimHemdani 1]

1. Summer football.

2. two top tiers of 14 teams each; tiers 3 and 4 regional.

The bottom 4 of tier 1 and the top 4 of tier 2 split to form a middle tier after 30 games.

These 8 teams play for promotion/relegation.

The remaining 10 in the top tier play for title/europe and 1 automatic relegation and one play off place.

3. 2 or 3 national football academies, where kids are given the best coaching with no pressure from the clubs. The kids are then drafted into the clubs, following the US collegiate system.

 

A 14 team league would only have 26 games playing twice not 30. If the 10 remaining after the split play twice that means an additonal 18 games which means a total of 44 which is too many. If the 8 teams in the "middle" league play twice that is an additional 14 games, so they only play, 40 in total? Also you seem to be saying that some in the bottom 4 would not be relegated but some in the top 10 might be relegated?

[BrahimHemdani 1]

I agree with 1. & 2., but I would not have the US Collegiate system as I believe it leaves itself open to brown envelope-type corruption. Instead I would rather have the NHL type of progression.

This is where the kids play in amateur/junior leagues, then progress into Major Junior leagues. By this time they are around 17/18. They are then available to the professional clubs via the annual draft system.

The best thing about this draft system is that of the 30 teams in the NHL, the worst team in the standings gets first pick in the next season's draft. In this way after a few years there tends to be parity between the clubs, because each year's phenoms are spread around. In this way you tend to break up the grip of the dominant teams.

It doesn't always work out in real life the way it should in theory because teams can trade draft picks etc. but another balancing feature is that clubs have a maximum cap space. This means that all teams are only allowed a certain amount of money that they can pay out in salary, and that cap limit is the same for all teams irrespective of how big their market is.

In this way you tend to see a runaway team in one year being broken up in the next year or two because they can't legally keep all the superstars in the league because each superstar is paid too much.

Those players not picked up in the draft pick can play in non-league hockey and can at a later date be picked up by a team as a non-draft pick ( usually these are the late developers ) but are still subject to the overall team-cap limit.

 

The American draft system in sports has a lot to commend it but I'm not certain that we have the depth of talent or foundations in the lower leagues to replicate it here.

 

The salary cap wouldn't work here because there is too big a disparity in earnings between the teams.