The new game isn't making the most money and production with training, but fitting the best team in the available salary constraints.
(begin rant...)
The real underlying problem is that the best players in the game should be better. Unfortunately, no one wants players better than the current status quo because the salary-income system is so out of whack (well, really, because the salary non-linearity is too steep at the top-- you go from 200k to 300k too quickly, and 300k to 400k even quicker). I mean, look at Villapadierna. He's good, don't get me wrong, but he's currently #1 in rating in the USA. And that's a guy that's received only occasional, mostly out of position, training since midway through his age 23 season. The top end players should be guys that get solid, dedicated training for 10+ seasons, not 5-6. What's worse, since the salary normalization is always based on *current* market conditions, there's no impetus for the top level to move upwards at more than a glacial pace.
Also, I should say, the problem isn't the difference in income between divs 1, 2, 3, etc. The problem is that the bell curve of player desirability (factoring in skills & salary) doesn't tail off far enough, so there's too much supply. This is a problem for the NTs, too, of course. We're rapidly approaching the point where the top-level players are only marginally different between the top countries and those in the 60-80 range.
The real question is how to fix it?
Could, of course, reduce the slope of top level salaries so that players with elite skills are desirable by good teams (i'm not talking about mono-skilled centers, but players like Joe Bronson and Martin Medrano who are legitimate well-trained beasts).
More drastically, but potentially much more effectively, tie salary to the free market. Make salary dependent on the transfer price (something like 5-10% of sale price).. fixes the salary problems implicitly (players get paid whatever they're worth on the free market), and could be tied into a system that rewards teams for training their own players (based on conservative salary adjustments between seasons).