2.2. Transfer of the
players : future prospects
The practices, especially when they are good, are thus
difficult to change.
The debates on the transfers of the sportsmen in general and
the players of football, in particular feed the chronicle so much lately that
it is malevolent not to speak about it within the framework about this study.
In its book the Bosman business. End of the era of the transfers ?,
professor Blanpain R. (1996, p. 6) warned already, in the sport business, the
abuses the practices mercantilists on the men, the players. He wrote in
particular that the man is not goods, he is not an object of trade.
Since, and before the higher bids of the three last seasons
transfers, the European Commission took the initiative, to sensitize the
opinion on the decline voluntary and prejudicial of the sporting objectives
compared to the commercial continuations.
Mrs Buffet, current French Minister for Youth and the Sports,
spoke, it, of the commercial drifts or artificial monetary flows, at the moment
when others see there a kind of spiral mercantile (BROHM J.M, 2000, pp. 26-27).
Which is the progress achieved on the future of the current system of the
transfers ?
2.2.a. Position of the European union on the practice
of the transfers.
For the European Commission, the system of the transfers of
the sportsmen in football violates the Treaty of Rome of 1952, constitutive of
the European union. It is against the fundamental principles of the union
related with freedom of movement for the workers and the free competition. From
where, its abolition or at least its reform is essential.
Certain clubs have rather rich manpower. There are players who
were not used yet and who will undoubtedly not be it even if, at the beginning,
they were supposed being of great importance for their team. The leaders prefer
to continue to recruit without using them. After, to include/understand why. ?
Therefore, commercial logic enormously underlies the policy of
recruitments of new players, throughout the world. The players themselves are
hardly content with the formula of transfers such as one resorts to it today.
French national union of the footballers
Professionals (UNFP) spoke about «market of slaves».
(The Humanity of January 16, 2000)
2.2.b. Position of the authorities of football :
impact of the abolition of the system of transfers.
When the administrators of football defend the system of
transfers, their first and more important argument are than a sporting league
needs a reasonable degree of uncertainty as for the result. The spectators are
interested by a sporting meeting if the winner is known before the play does
not start or with a sporting competition whose champion is known before Ia mid-
season. A sport of team needs a competitive balance between the teams taking
part in a championship.
Because of their site in large cities equipped with a
high density of population, certain clubs have a higher potential to find
talents and to attract a higher number spectators in comparison with the clubs
of smaller cities.
Owing to the fact that the teams of large cities have more
raised incomes, they can offer higher wages to the players and consequently
attract the best of them of all the corners of the country.
A liberalized market of the players would have as a result the
concentration of all the players of talent in only one or a small number of
large clubs, which harms the competitive balance of the championship, decreases
the uncertainty of the result and reduces the interest of the spectator.
Consequently, a system of transfers is necessary to guarantee to the small
clubs the right to reserve some good players for themselves and to sell other
good players on the market.
Another concern derives owing to the fact that the
system always had the aim of compensating for the money spent by the small
clubs for the training of young players. These clubs will lose the allowances
of transfer which they receive for the sale of the talents. If the young
players having talent can leave their clubs to go in a better club without
there being a financial compensation, not only the first will have financial
problems, but moreover the training of young people will be discouraged, so
that this important social function of the sport will disappear.
Another problem seems to come up, the exodus towards large
clubs of young players sometimes even old only ten years. The exodus is done
from one club to another but also from one country to another. The will to
train these young players is certainly creditable but one should not occult the
side mercantilist of such transfers. That could be controlled on the fact that
a very young player is not ensured to become Ronaldo.
A last problem relates to the distribution of wages to the
players. A free market of players would cause a climbing of the wages of the
best players, because the clubs will be made competition to engage them. This
situation is created with the detriment of the players of the average teams and
the profit of the owners of the clubs. It results from this a distribution even
more unequal from the wages. The high wages of certain players, thus poured
with the detriment of the profit of the club, are likely to worsen the
financial insecurity of the small clubs, which will be unable to pay the
overcost of work.
It is since Tuesday October 31 2000 that the joint committee
of the FIFA/Uefa gave to the European subcommittee bureau, the new proposals
which should govern the transfers of the sportsmen. Thus, according to the
world of football,
- the transfers of the minors are from now on
prohibited ;
- the duration of the transfers would be with more than 2 to
3 years ;
- only a transfer would be authorized by team, per annum.
2.2.3. Quid of the future of the
mercato ?
However, taking into account the many disturbances which it
generated, the continuation of the mercato is not any more unanimous setting of
way by all the experts of football. In France, for example, the national union
of the trainers, frameworks and professional technical administrators of
football (UNECATEF) had launched in December a «consultation» on the
continuation or not of the market of winter of sale and purchase of the
players. «75%
trainers, D1 and D2 confused, decided against «. The
trainer of Auxerre details: » We are against because it creates disorders
in our manpower. Players, those which always do not play, the substitutes, see
an advisability of going in a club where they think of playing. They put all
the bazaar to us. «Ground on which the interests of various protagonists,
namely, players, managers, trainers and leaders of teams are always opposite,
the mercato does not satisfy anybody, completely.
Jean-Luc Arribart predicted even the end of the current round
of observation and the future, according to him, is dark: «The interest of
the managers being to make move their players as often as possible, the
transfers will accelerate in winter because the players listen to much their
managers. The players and their agents have the capacity today. They decide
duration of the contract, clauses which they wish, when they leave. They seized
the power because one gave them. There is no counterpart for them: they have
all the advantages without having the disadvantages. If the player is good, it
will leave to seek fortune elsewhere. If it is not good, it will leave
nevertheless. Front, it tried to recover its place with the drive or with the
reserve to show with the trainer whom it had been mistaken. Today, one calls
his manager to leave. » In front of such a table and taking into
consideration survey of the trainers, only one question arises: should the
mercato be preserved? «I preached his suppression near the League of which
I am a vice-president, explains Guy Roux, but I was minority. The presidents of
club voted his continuation. » In the name of the sacro-saint principle of
alignment on the other European countries which have them also a mercato.
This tagging along aggravates Roux: « Fortunately
that they are not thrown to water, if not, one all would swim. » Only
the noun will be modified, reveals the Burgundian trainer, « because
the UNFP (the trade union of the owners of club) found that that made a little
mercantile ». These people-there are invaluable, and through their
request, the embarrassment which one guesses on their premises lends to
smiling. In any event, nobody will be easily deceived. «There is crafty
one which proposed «the market of Christmas», but that makes the same
effect that mercato», laughs Guy Roux.
As for Dobraje, it proposes «longer period of
joker». Remain that instead of winter market, the trainers proposed the
engagement of a joker. «The arrival of two jokers plus a guard during the
same time appears more convenient to me», confirms Dobraje. (The Humanity
of January 16, 2000).
2.2.4. Proposal for a solution.
A better dialog between agents, players and clubs would make
it possible to limit the failures and to avoid the situations of blocking. In
all the cases, the market of the transfers puts opposite three parts, in fact,
the yielding team, the assignee team and, if necessary, the manager or the
agent of player. What is particular in this market, it is the place which the
player occupies, itself. Indeed, this place is quasi diluted in the nature of
the contract. In the dialogs, the agreement of the player is acquired at once
that the team of which he is member in expressed the keen desire and informed
of it that which would wish to acquire it. It is in these terms that one can
read article 13 of the payment of the FIFA relating to the statute and the
transfer of the players. It is relayed in almost similar words by the
provisions of the European regulations (UEFA) and Belgian (URBSFA) on the
matter, as brought back by professor Blanpain Roger (1996, pp. 41-78). As, it
appears as the agreement of two clubs concerned with the transfer of the player
is enough so that this one is perfect. Remain however, the question of the
manager.
2.3. The manager.
This last is the intermediary to which it player entrusts for
in particular defending its interests in this kind of trade. Taking into
account the term of the office that the manager is given on defense of the
aforesaid interests of the player, it manages this last with greatest delicacy,
especially if the player with the irrefutable reputation of star, capable to
still remain from the point of view of the conquests and covetousnesses of the
richest clubs. It perceives enormous commissions on the clear sum which in end
of the accounts the player receives.
Because of their influence on the ground of businesses of
football business and their alliances throughout the world with the leaders of
the modest clubs, the managers are another race which one can regard as
contributing to their manner with internationalization of this sport.
In addition to the fact that their prospection is not limited
in only one State, they are able to carry out recruitments the many ones and
talented players who make the pride and consolidate the success of the teams.
They make and demolish the teams, and because of them, the wages of the players
showed a gradual increase, like illustrates it hereafter the graph, which
indicates the evolution of the wages of the players of football of the first
English division. In the graph which illustrates this data table better, one
realizes obviously owing to the fact that the curve, drawn in bottom, of these
wages is ascending.
That is explained by the progressive insertion of football in
the bosoms of the commercial economy. Football became a profession, like are
already of different. But, this situation is neither single, nor specific to
the only English football.
In fact, Europe, which is one of the most important tanks of
the professional footballers faces a species of a new innovative wage
report/ratio since the Bosman stop.
The fields tension of the wage policy swims between two
slopes. The first stresses the optimization of the commercial value of a player
high-speed motorboat, and thus with high sporting productivity, with which
wages and raised premiums will be allocated, given that that this expenditure,
which have sometimes the value of a saving, will be recovered thanks to the
unit of the incomes which the profit player will inevitably bring to the club,
via a transfer to the good moment and the good purchaser. Naturally, the
baremic grid of the wages mentioned above and to which this justification is
referred relates to a minority of profitable players of the hardening of Shine
Figo (Real Madrid), David Beckham, Roy Kean (Manchester), Rivaldo (Barcelona),
Shabani Nonda (Monaco), Jan Koller and Radzinski (Anderlecht), Marc de Gryse
(Germinal Beerschot Antwerpen), Bangoura and Mbayo (Lokeren), Boeka Lisasi
(Westerlo). And the list can lengthen in all the clubs, then that each one of
these teams to this handle in her center.
In addition, the more or less anonymous players, from now on
are placed in a situation of trend precarisation of work, remainder, increasing
with the age. They are shown consequently less claiming, by accepting on the
other hand very important differentials with regard to the wages and of the
premiums as well as various contracts.
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