A strain of Sol Campbell’s troublesome hamstring, another furrow on Arsene Wenger’s careworn brow, and once again the cry goes up: clubs should be ”compensated” for releasing their players for internationals. It is understandable on the face of it — why should poor Arsenal suffer for an injury their player picked up while playing for England? — but in football nothing is straightforward, all is political.
Club vs country is only the most visible front of a global battle beginning to rage over who controls football: its heart, soul — and money.
G14, the European lobby group of leading clubs (there are actually 18 of them) including Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool, have already challenged Fifa, world football’s governing body, in the Swiss Competition Commission, arguing for greater involvement in the running of the international game and for what it describes as ”appropriate compensation for the mandatory release of players”.
Last month, G14 joined another court action against Fifa, taken out by the Belgian club Royal Charleroi, who are seeking compensation for the loss of their midfielder Abdelmajid Oulmers, who was out for eight months after he returned with damaged ankle ligaments from playing for his country, Morocco, against Burkina Faso last November. Charleroi finished fifth in the Belgian league when they could have been title contenders, so they appear to have an attractive case.
Then there is the comparatively new European Professional Football Leagues grouping, chaired by the Premier League chairperson Dave Richards. This organisation is putting pressure on Uefa, European football’s governing body, for leading clubs to be insured and compensated if their players are selected for the European Championship.
In England, these moves highlight the glaring conflicts of interest at the heart of the game. Richards and David Dein, Arsenal’s vice-chairperson, while pushing for money and control in the interests of the clubs, are both main board directors of the Football Association, which will clearly suffer if payments have to be made. The FA is against mandatory payments to clubs, saying they would be ”unworkable” because smaller national associations would be unable to meet them.
G14, marshalled in Brussels by the group’s general manager, former Uefa executive Thomas Kurth, argues that times have changed since Fifa was formed. The rules were made in 1904, and the big clubs now have a right to be directly involved and paid. Since the 1990 World Cup in Italy, television and commercial revenues have exploded for international football, just as they have domestically for the Premier League.
Fifa has sold the TV rights to next year’s World Cup for £670-million, 15 times what it made in 1990, and McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Emirates and other global corporations have paid a further £238-million for the hoardings and marketing rights.
Fifa does pay the national associations a varying, generally modest, amount for taking part — England received £6-million for the 2002 World Cup — and the FA pays the England players, on top of their club wages, for commercial appearances for ”Team England”. The FA, along with other richer national associations, also insures its international players — including Campbell — against injury. That money is paid to the clubs but they, aspiring global corporations themselves, fume at not getting a direct cut of Fifa’s vast income.
”It is no longer a fair system,” Kurth told me. ”Fifa generates huge money now, and players are expected to be with their international teams for up to two months; we calculate the World Cup involves 22 000 man-hours. The clubs should be given substantial payment to compensate.”
G14 stresses it is not seeking all the tens of thousands of pounds that their clubs pay their players every week, and Kurth was also keen to say it wants the money from Fifa, not from the national football associations. That, however, looks to be an artificial distinction; the money would have to come from somewhere, and the associations would lose out.
Fifa maintains that this whole campaign attacks the very basis of the organisation of football. Whatever the shortcomings of its democratic workings, Fifa is a body of 207 member associations from around the world, a few from rich but mostly from poor countries, which nevertheless have equal votes.
Sepp Blatter, Fifa’s president, points to the fact that Fifa’s role is to develop the sport with the money it makes and, after costs, the rest (£63-million last year), is distributed to poor national associations and the Goal football development programme. If the rich European clubs were allowed a central role in Fifa, and paid a major share of World Cup revenue, that development money would be affected. Plus, the big clubs already benefit from the profile of international football.
Fifa is not talking about the court cases publicly, but at last month’s congress in Marrakech, Blatter addressed the issues.
”The gap between football’s rich and poor is widening,” he told delegates, ”as is the imbalance between associations and leagues. We have to fight this alarming trend. The structure of the football pyramid must be defended for the good of the game.”
G14 points to England, noting in one document that until comparatively recently the FA ruled domestic football undisputed. In its assessment, G14 lets slip, perhaps in an accident of translation, what the clubs always deny. ”Now the highest levels of the English domestic game are controlled by those with the highest stake — the Premier League clubs.”
This is the endgame of which Blatter, the arch football politician, will be acutely aware. If the old, established sporting governing bodies cede a little ground, the clubs, relentlessly commercial, push ceaselessly for more.
Fifa says it wants to maintain the traditional sporting structure and not give an inch, but it has talked already about introducing a fund to insure players against injury incurred on international duty.
This could be the first breach of the ramparts, similar to the ending in 1983 of home and away clubs sharing gate receipts in England, which began to concentrate money in the big club’s hands. You can weep for the erosion of football’s pure spirit, but also note that whenever Fifa refers to its glorious sporting carnival, it calls it the World Cupâ„¢. Football is a very commercial enterprise these days and many in the game would be surprised if the clubs don’t force a deal, at least on insurance. — Â