It isn't. Again, football is not like American Football or the NBA where, for different reasons, you can buy one player and win it all. It is very possible to p

It isn't. Again, football is not like American Football or the NBA where, for different reasons, you can buy one player and win it all. It is very possible to produce a winning team (although not one that will likely win the league) composed only of specialist players: Fulham (got to the Europa League final), Bolton, Stoke (first-time with Pulis), Leicester...these are just teams in the recent past in one league. The vast majority of teams that try to "buy the best players" don't succeed (usually there is only one or two players currently in the game who can win games by themselves, there is a substantially larger group of players who cost essentially the same and don't perform at all) because they pay too much/buy players randomly who don't fit their system/overestimate skill. I would look more closely at what I said. I did not say that analytics hasn't been around for a long time (for some reason, the article you link fails to mention that Reep actually worked for clubs, and found some degree of success...but there is no Nash strategy, Bolton got to the Europa League playing long ball football...it is a fine strategy suggesting that it doesn't work on average means nothing because everything is conditional in football). Btw, your model of salary cap=pay most for players is obviously flawed if you consider that the non-existence of a salary cap does not occur in a vacuum. Player salaries/transfer fees are a dynamic competition so the lack of salary cap means that most players are overpriced (because clubs are inherently overoptimistic...there are clubs who make money just by developing players and selling them to bigger clubs). The actual implication of salary caps (in combination with FFP) is that success is correlated to your ability to generate revenue. It isn't that the top clubs can pay more for players, it is that they can "lose" more overpaying than anyone else. As an example, Manchester United have rock-solid sponsorship revenue (iirc, they even have a "tractor partner"...they sponsors for literally everything) so they can overpay for almost every player, lose tons of money doing so, and end up doing okay. If a club lower down the table made deals as bad, they would get relegated. No salary caps just mean the rich clubs get richer.