Football must be stopped for a moment due to the corona pandemic. Starting from the Italian League which suspended Serie A and other major European leagues, the Indonesian League 1 was no exception, which was also postponed. Many effects are felt by each element in football. Football lovers clearly lose one of the reasons they are entertained every week. The media also lost the object of sales, the soccer match. But further than that, the most disadvantaged are the actors directly involved in the football industry itself. Ranging from staff, coaches to players.
The club lost many sources of revenue ranging from merchandise due to decreased purchasing power of supporters to revenue from tickets and broadcast rights were lost due to the zero game. As a result, cutting the salaries of players and staff is one way to maintain the continuity of the club. The Italian League was the first to stop the soccer competition. Coupled with Juventus being the first to also take a policy of cutting the salaries of its players.
Juventus and their players agreed to make salary compensation reductions in March, April, May and June 2020. All Bianconeri players and first team coaches get the same percentage reduction. With this agreement, Juve was able to save around 90 million euros (Rp1.61 trillion). If in the future Serie A starts rolling again, Juventus will re-open negotiations on this salary deduction.
This step was followed by other Italian teams. Although he was criticized by the Italian Football Players Association (AIC) for salary deductions, all Serie A participants agreed to pay cuts. The gross salaries of the players and staff will be deducted by a third if the official Serie A is canceled and adjusted by cutting the salary one-sixth if the competition continues. If in Serie A all clubs agree to make salary deductions, another case in La Liga. Only Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Real Madrid and Valencia officially confirmed to cut the salaries of players and coaches.
Barcelona and Atletico Madrid became the first and largest salary cuts. Barcelona and Atletico have already announced a salary cut of 70 percent and have been agreed by players and coaches to ensure other employees will continue to receive their salaries in full.
Meanwhile Real Madrid, which had long negotiations with players and the ranks of the coaches, announced that they would make a salary cut of 20 percent. Valencia became the latest club that announced it would cut the salaries of players and coaches.
Valencia issued an official statement, “The club is committed to protecting its most vulnerable workers in the face of uncertain developments from this situation. The first team players and coaches as well as the academy and board of directors have agreed to cut their wages to provide a large additional percentage to the income of their employees. “
French Ligue 1, which recently officially ended the 2019/2020 season and named PSG as champions, also announced that it was asking for teams to carry out a salary deduction policy. In order to help finance the club, the French Football Federation along with club officials agreed to cut the salaries of players and coaches in passing the corona outbreak. Players and coaches will receive a pay cut of 50 percent. But not all players will feel the deduction, because only players who have a salary above 100 thousand euros per month are experiencing salary deductions.
PSG, who became the Ligue 1 richest team and the 2019/2020 season champions, were even rejected by their star players. As reported by the French media, L’Equipe, the PSG star players represented by the Captain, Thiago Silva did not agree if their salaries were cut.
But the club’s owner, Nasse Al-Khelaifi, insists the players can understand this condition considering that PSG suffered a loss of 210 million pounds due to the cessation of competition. “I hope they try to fight for their club,” said Al-Khelaifi. In Germany, the Bundesliga is one of the pioneers of pay-cutting policies amid the Covid 19 pandemic. Borussia Dortmund started this movement by cutting 20 percent of the salaries of players and coaches when there was no competition, and if the competition continued, the cuts would be reduced to 10 percent. It is hoped that with this policy, Dortmund can save the lives of 850 employees who are threatened with losing their jobs due to this outbreak.
Bayern Munich also follows in the footsteps of Dortmund. The Bavarian players and board of directors will receive a pay cut of 20%. Bayern’s salary burden for the sports division is 336.2 million euros. This policy was agreed upon by the board of directors with the Bayern players.
The policy of the Bundesliga giant duo was also followed by Bayer Leverkusen, Borussia Mönchengladbach, Schalke 04, and Union Berlin. Even Union Berlin players are not willing to be paid in order to help the team’s balance sheet. In addition, positive gestures were also directed at Bayern, Dortmund, RB Leipzig and Leverkusen. The four top Bundesliga teams raised 20 million Euros to help the Bundesliga 2 team.
The Premier League Team is also taking steps to cut the salaries of its players. Southampton became a pioneer in taking this step. The Saints chose to cut the salaries of players and core staff Soton by 70 percent. This is done to provide subsidies to their non-match staff.
West Ham United, Sheffield United, Arsenal and Watford also followed the steps taken by Southampton by cutting the salaries of players and coaches. This was not followed by Manchester United and Chelsea who announced not to cut salaries of players, coaches and all their staff. Now, the FA and EFL as the operators of the English Premier League have proposed that each Premier League team deducts a player’s salary by 30 percent.
If the Europa League clubs that have economic stability alone try to reduce spending by cutting the salaries of players, then how about teams in Asia, especially Indonesia?
China as the first country in the corona case also carried out a salary cutting policy for Chinese Super League (CSL) players and coaches. Although not yet received official confirmation from the CSL team, the Chinese Football Association (CFA) proposed a 30 percent salary deduction policy.
This cut is intended for players and coaches except young players and ordinary staff. CSL is known as the league with the highest player salaries in the world. Big names such as Brazilian SIPG midfielder from Brazil, Oscar, have a salary of 27 million dollars per season. If you can cut a player’s salary, it will greatly affect the CSL club’s finances.
Southeast Asian football is not immune from salary cuts. For example, the Thai League or the Thai League, the FA of Thailand (FAT) proposes that each club can cut the salaries of its users. Unmitigated, FAT suggested to cut player salaries up to 50% for Thai League One and Thai League Two players.
M-League also does the same with Thai League. Malaysian Football Federation (FAM) through its Secretary General, Stuart Ramalingam confirmed that the Malaysian League club can cut the salaries of players by 30 percent. However, the players whose salaries are cut are players with a salary above RM 15,000 per month. This was carried out from the April period until the resumption of Malaysian soccer competition.
Returning to the archipelago, PSSI through a decree numbered SKEP / 48 / III / 2020 on March 27 states, the club is required to pay a maximum of 25 percent of the nominal contract for the period March to June 2020. This decision was taken after the competition operator PT Liga Indonesia Baru (LIB) accepting a number of clubs on the pretext of force majeure because of the 19th plague.
This means that Indonesian League players will get a discount of 75 percent, a figure that is considered too large by many. The Indonesian Professional Footballers Association (APPI) considers this decision to be a one-sided decision because it does not involve APPI and the club in determining this decision. In fact, APPI also reported it to the International Federation of Professional Footballers Association (FIFPro) as an international association of professional players.
As Endro Yuwanto wrote in Republika Online, PSSI itself has received a letter from FIFPro questioning the policy for cutting salaries. FIFPro, in a letter dated April 4, 2020, asked PSSI to explain why the decision was issued without discussing with players through the domestic players association, in this case APPI. This is not in line with international practice, such as FIFPro, which is always in dialogue with FIFA and the Asian Football Federation (AFC). FIFPro also asked PSSI to immediately follow up on the situation.
Basically salary cuts in difficult times like this are indeed not a wrong policy. It’s just that cutting must be done with a variety of considerations so that it can avoid the company from financial problems and also does not make employees lack in meeting their daily needs.
ASL
