BY DAVID ONJILI
Anyone who is not a keen follower of professional sports can easily be blinded by the huge amounts of money that notable names in professional football earn. The English Premier League is followed closely by most Kenyans and some of the transfer fees for players is mind-boggling and it’s very easy to view the sport and the athletes as very rich individuals. A background check reveals very huge pay disparities and sad tales of players living in abject poverty as a result of exploitation or injuries.
The Federation Internationale des Associations de Footballeurs Professionnels (FIFPrpo) is a worldwide representative organization for some 65, 000 professional footballers worldwide. With headquarters in Hoofddorp, Netherlands, it has grown from an entirely European organization to a worldwide body that caters for the welfare of footballers including Africa and it has aided many nations to form player associations for the collective bargaining of their interests.
A notable initiative by FIFPrpo was in 2013 when they launched a legal challenge against the transfer system of players. The reasoning behind this was the fact that 99% of the players involved in transfer end up suffering during this time because 28% of the transfer fee is normally taken by agents and that the players themselves are not paid the fees in time, or at all, by their clubs.
Third party player ownership is where private investors, and they can be individuals, a company or a fund, own part of a player’s economic rights. The transfer of Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano from Brazil to West Ham United is the most popular case of 3rd party player ownership in football. Michel Platini, former head of European football’s governing body Uefa once called it “slavery” because the 3rd party owner has a right in deciding the amounts of money the player was signed for to another club without the player’s consent with regards to club or pay.
Sam Allardyce is credited for being the shortest serving England manager; his 67-day reign came to an end after just one game in charge because of evidence courtesy of The Telegraph newspaper journalists. In the footage, Mr Allardyce claims to be meeting some men who represented a Far East firm where he seemed to tell them there were ways he knew and could aid them in going around the 3rd party ownership situation.
On the Kenyan soccer scene, a Kenyan international who plays for a top Kenyan Premier League side has to date, 3 years on, never seen a shilling of the transfer fee that his former club paid to his current club. This matter is further compounded by the fact that the officials of his current club even went as far as demanding he pays them a commission for them to talk to his current club to negotiate a better deal. While the Kenya Premier League Limited, which runs the domestic league should intervene, you also must understand that all this happened with the consent of the player and never in writing so they are not in a position to.
It is also not very wise from the players’ personal perspective to be very vocal, this may cost him, say were he to seek a new contract with another club in the country because the clubs and agents operate like a cartel of exploitation and work hand in hand with one another.
Josip Vukovic is a former Croatia Under-23 international, in an investigation done by the Guardian newspaper in the UK, when his team, RNK Split was relegated 2 divisions from the top league for failure to regularly pay player wages, this was not just the first time he was suffering financially from a club. Previously, he had been injured for a few months while playing for Istra, he had to settle his own medical bills totaling to 10,000 Euros for treatment of his pelvic bone, his 4000 Euros wages at the club were reduced by 50% because of being out injured never mind he had a contract
What many football fans do not know is that footballers suffer greatly; they see football as a glamorous sport where players live large and earn big bucks. Unknown to them is that most clubs have financial constraints and that a number of club owners are senior or well connected individuals in governments and can exploit players knowing they will be protected due to their close ties. A number of the football club bosses are just business people in search of profits and care least about player welfare with most of them being very corrupt individuals with no interest in football at all. They use the fame club ownership brings them to advance their own selfish interest.
Local football federations and sports ministers both previous and current have been a total failure; they have never laid down laws and never enforce existing ones because in their political thinking, money and influence is more dear to the welfare of players. Many African players who aspire to play in Europe must know that it is not rosy as it appears. If you do not play in the big leagues like Victor Wanyama does for Tottenham Hotspur then your European sojourn may be a trip in futility and woe if you get injured because chances of your contract being cancelled are very high and being a foreigner will work against you seeking justice.
While Neymar will be earning a whooping £520 000 a week, many footballers world over live on less than £1 a month. Uefa president, Aleksander Ceferin has admitted to a proposal to introduce a salary cap in the game but will it work in such a capitalistic football world? Time will tell, funny that in Kenya, no local football club can ever reveal the salaries they pay their players but rumour has it that Rwandan born Gor Mahia striker Jacques Tuyisenge is one of the highest paid players earning some Sh150 000 to Sh200 000 a month while we have players in the same league going for close to 3 months without pay that ranges between Sh20 000 and Sh30 000. It is not a fair game after all.
