Are Players Subjected to too Many Matches?

UEFA actually objects to many of these additional tournaments (and qualifying dates). FIFA is the real culprit (of the two) with the World Club Championship and the Confederations Cup (both of which UEFA are vehemently opposed to).

 

I think that Blatter means he would rather have a "traditional" season, which means no play-offs, and preferably alligning the season's start and finish with that of the majority of Northern Hemisphere countries - ie August/September to May.

 

I don't think that there are too many games - a pro player must be able to play two games per week in the average - but the break is too short. There should be two to three months off season either in summer or winter, in which the players can fully regenerate. Problem is that currently there is about one month until the players resume training (or play UI Cup) after the last game - and this only for the ones not playing national team, which have additional odd tournaments and games scheduled later on. Some have a factual off season of just three weeks and this is not anywhere near a reasonable rest.

 

How many countries are there that play "worthington cup" type matches? Apart from the worthington cup can you actually name any of these extraneous tournaments that you wish to get rid of? I'd guess you can't, and the reason for that is that they don't exist.

 

If there is only 16 teams in the Premiership and no League cup, midtable teams (like Tottenham) would just have 15 guaranteed home games for a whole season. I don't think that would be very popular among fans and boards at these clubs.

 

Britain? What does any of this have to do with Scotland or Wales?

ENGLAND

 

It's still the English football league, just because there are 3 Welsh teams doesn't make it British any more than Berwick makes the league in Scotland a British league.

The money from Sky would decrease as the interest in the Premiership would decrease. The simple fact is in a season or two you'd end up with the likes of Sunderland and West Brom back in the top flight and one of the other 'big names' out of it. It's the way of the world, the fewer teams you have in the top flight the more likely it is a 'big team' will drop out. And who's to say the standard would improve? There's certainly no evidence that would point to that, in fact it'd almost certainly point to the contrary.

 

That standard wouldn't improve much. You could have 30 teams in the premiership and as long as you gave them £12 million a season TV money the standard would hardly be any different to now. All a smaller division would do would be to create more panic among clubs as an even larger percentage would be under threat of relegation each year. Neither England, Spain or Italy seem to benefit hugely on the international front from having the strongest leagues. If anything it's proving a hinderence as young players never get the chance as top clubs need to get into Europe while anyone below halfway daren't risk putting young players in.

 

Invest in youth development? If they had more money and there was less competition for big name players (fewer teams able to afford them) You'd find less emphasis on the youngsters as the teams would have their pick of the established players.

 

The amount of money spent of youth development in England is actually harming youth development. Far too many players in the 19-25 range, who really should be looking to move elsewhere and improve by playing competitive football, are too content to play in the premiership reserve teams for £6000 a week rather than drop down a division.

No, you couldn't split the money 30 ways and still have £12 million each, but the point I'm making is that the standard has more to do with TV money than the number of clubs. With 16 clubs probably 10 of them would have a realistic chance of being involved in the relegation battle. That's hardly going to encourage open flowing football.

 

this is a serious problem that is affecting the clubs now since the 90's. That is also the reason why they don't play internationals as well. ALL european leagues should start at the same time and END at the same time and cater for a large rest for players (also remember thay have a family life too!!) And if they REALLY want to play more soccer they can play for their national side and play friendlies. Australia is caught in this problem as most of their players play in England and are released late April/May whereas the Uruguayans play mainly in Spain and Germany and Italy and aren't full best until June, that is when Australia will hopefully play friendlies during that time. The seasons for europe need to be REGULATED

 

I read that '98 - '02, between club and country fixtures, Rivaldo and R.Carlos had a total of 4 months off!!!! Imagine the wear and tear.

Potential Solutions:

1) Football players need to unionize. They have the least bargaining power of any top professional athletes in serious money making sports. They have close to zero say on format, dates of competitions. Revenue sharing...do they even have a clue? On the fixtures front, they should demand at least three days between fixtures, four if a travel day is necessary. They should also demand a capped number of days played per year (65 sounds good) --leave it up to the club to decide when its imperative to play them.

2) As pointed out before, there should be at most two domestic competitions a) league; b) cup. Off the top of my head, France also has its "worthington cup" called Coupe de La Ligue. Brazil, until recently, had regional tournaments such as Carioca, the Copa Brasil, super-regionals such as Rio-Sao Paulo, the Brasileiro, and continental tournaments such as Libertadores and now defunct Copa Mercosul - I witnessed Flamengo play 4 games in a 10 day span!

3) They should merge national team Continental and WC qualifying! I know I'll get stick for this, 'cause it has come up before - there's no point taxing the superstars for two different qualifiers when the historic results are very similiar. Check out who made it to Euro 2000 and who later qualified for WC 2002...its almost the same list. As an example, the African nations cup will now serve as qualifying for the WC. Smart move.....validates the ANC, and pleases the Euro clubs who kept beefing about loosing their Kanus et al. Sooner or later the clubs are going to win that battle elsewhere.

4) Champions league should be paired down, as expressed by others. UEFA has some nerve blaming FIFA for fixture congestion when they've turned both Champions League and EUFA Championship into monstrosities . Who doesn't qualify for EUFA these days? Out with FIFA Confederations cup (but keep a sensible world club).

5) Coordinated world calendar.

 

There are organisations like FIFPro and ProPlayer. The players have enough power; after all they are extremely well paid for the games they play.

This should be up for the agreement of clubs and associations. I can just speak for German Bundesliga, where a small league cup of the first five plus the cup winner is held in the pre-season as an appetizer. Sportive meaning is close to 0 and the performances are poor (but the income is very good). It was thought about having an All Star Game right before the season instead, but the idea couldn't make it. The real national cup competition is also poor until the semifinals. I'm no big fan of it and personally could very well imagine to abolish this meanwhile more or less meaningless six-round-competition in favor of four-rounds-playoffs (it's just my idea and won't be realised, so no crying is necessary).

We rather don't have problems with qualifyers, but there are always mysterious influenza waves over Dortmund and Munich right before friendly games of the NT. I feel little pity for the clubs but for an international schedule it would be better to adopt the hockey WC format and play in groups without qualifying. This would mean A to probably E - WC with 32 teams each, with relegation of two teams every time. I also would prefer to have WC every two years replacing the continental cups, but we had this discussion before.

CL was expanded as the top clubs demanded it. There's no better income source for them. And CL as well as UEFA Cup will be reduced after the season. I got my very special take on the European competitions, but I already wrote this somewhere else.

Yes, absolutely necessary. I don't know a country that couldn't play February/March until October/November, while the traditional European format is a big problem (anyone who - like me - is going to a lower division uncomfortable stadium in central Europe in December or January will know what I'm talking about). UEFA should change this. For the Olympics you can plan a break and the NT games have to be held after the season in a scheduled time frame. That way the players could at least rest in December and January.

 

It's very rare that league games are played at a rate of more than one a week. Exceptions tend to come when games have been postponed and have to be squeezed in later in the season. In the States clearly there's no reason for basketball or hockey games to be postponed, baseball games that are rained off aren't re-arranged (I think) and the NFL plays on in all weathers (unless I'm mistaken). Very few players ever play more than 65 club games anyway. If the player limit was to include internationals as well then the amount of players getting mysterious short-term injuries before international matches would increase.

I remember a few years ago on a TV sports show a player said that the number of league matches should be cut from 38 to at most 34. A club chairman who was also on the show then asked him if he'd be happy to take a proportional cut in wages. Cue "rabbit caught in the headlights" expression on the face of the footballer.

Brazil has always had a mad schedule, but that's just Brazil - it's not normal. I'd agree that there's no need for a second cup competion. The one in England only started because the League wanted a competition to play under the novelty of the newly invented floodlights in midweek.

It's not really a problem. In UEFA, to qualify for either the world cup or euro championship teams play either 8 or 10 games in two years - hardly a taxing schedule.

 

Olafgb and RichardL, fair comments, I’ll try to respond to both of you in a general sense.

1)Player organizations have different powers in different leagues. I’m not versed in each individual league so cannot comment on your domestic player association; but the ones that I am familiar with are extremely weak in comparison to their counterparts in traditional US sports. Its not for nothing that it took individual players such as Bosman to acquire rights that should have been collectively bargained. So I disagree, they do not have enough power.

As for the players being well paid: a) it doesn’t preclude them from having a greater say in their own destinies, and b) how are the vast majority of players who don’t become megastars, and play for 5 or so years, doing post football? Most of these guys have no education outside of footy, and most don’t receive any transitional assistance. For that and many more reasons they should unionize.

Additionally, existing local chapters have very little input when it comes to international demands placed on them by the UEFAs and FIFA. There should be strong global player network that deals with these governing bodies. They cannot be at the whim of bureaucrats.

[Or at the whim of sports agents - a whole other subject, but one related to this lack of organization in my view]

2) RichardL you mentioned that for the majority of players there aren’t too many games. If you are a nondescript player on a mid to lower level team I agree. However, for the superstars on teams of note it is most definitely a problem that needs to be solved. The Rivaldo and R. Carlos examples are evidence of this. Both play in big Euro clubs and must ply their skills for league, cup, euro club championships, national continental championships, and national world cup; and usually deep into each competition. R. Carlos, despite being the physical specimen he is, has complained about the toll on his body, mind and family life for a long time. It would be interesting to see the stats for number of matches played by Beckham over the same timespan. It may be a minority of players (at least in Europe), but it’s the players that we seem to care about seeing play at peak performance in all these competitions.

And what is the right number of games for the toll taken on a football player? Has any independent study ever been published? Is it 45,50,60?

 

All European seasons on the same schedule? That's silly, due to the variations in climate across the continent - you simply couldn't have a large number of games in Moscow during the winter, or Seville or Istanbul or Athens in the summer.

 

I'd like to know what rights/powers you think US sportsmen have that player in Europe don't have. One right young players have in Europe is the right to play for any club they want, rather than being drafted.
The Bosman ruling came in after he challenged the system in Belgium (which was unique to Belgium) but the EU applied it to all EU nations. There weren't hoardes of players demanding such freedom of contract beforehand as the previous system made little difference - tribunal fees were always much lower than normal fees and I can't recall a single transfer falling through because of it.
Most pros have 15 year careers, not 5 year ones. All clubs in England have to pay a percentage of their income (normally from TV revenue) to the Professional footballers association, who, among other things, provide financial assistance for players whose careers are ended through injury, and also for helping players retrain once their careers are over.

Brazil play more friendlies than the vast majority of teams (said by many to be at the request of their sponsors, Nike). In Europe at least there is no clash between World Cup and continental championship matches as they are played alternately every two years.
The champions league will require 4 less games to win from next season with the scrapping of the second group phase. Even though England has two cups, a lot of top players are rested for all but the last round or two usually anyway.

 

If an NHL club and the player they draft can't come to a contarct within a certain time limit, that player can re-enter the draft. That is rare since player and team tend to come to an agreement.

The PA's in North America have become such a nuisance to some that there have been "trust busting" done in the past few years.

The only league in NA that has an effective salary cap is the NFL.

 

Hope your easter was good. Now to the debate...

My comments where global in nature and not specific to Europe or the UK. Without being an expert on the UK labor structure here is a big one : guaranteed contracts.

They don’t exist in Europe as a whole (remembering Moriatti’s and other people’s statements about how Inter were “generous” enough to have continued to pay Ronaldo at 100% through his injury; albeit him getting injured while in the process of fulfilling his contractual obligations to them!), and I don't believe they exist in the Premiership. This would never have been an argument made by an NBA owner, as generally contracts are guaranteed (see Grant Hill). Even when not incurred in the line of duty, players are protected from other force majeure occurrences (see Alonzo Mourning and his kidney ailment).

Here’s another: Guaranteed number of league roster spots. In the mid 80s the players won a guarantee that the league would maintain min 253 player jobs even if there were to be a reduction in the number of teams. Does this type of guarantee exist in England for Premiership players?

These are off the top of my head. The only way to comprehensively answer your question would be to do a detailed analysis, which I don’t have the time to do. The point I was making was that unionization has served players well in USA, and the same should be investigated world wide. If England has a strong players’ union, great.

However, my point still stands that there does not seem to be a strong international player organization to deal with the EUFAs and FIFA.

The NBA draft is now only two rounds, with the vast majority of aspirants being free to choose with whom they ply their trade, if they are good enough to make a team. Those “unfortunate” enough to have no choice but be drafted, are made instant millionaires due to the agreed upon rookie wage scale for first and second round draftees. More importantly, the reduction to two rounds was achieved by players through the collective bargaining process in 1987. Again, collective bargaining at work. No one individual player had to shoulder the weight of litigation as did Bosman.

 

Much has been written about Bosman, and I read much of it when the decision came down. It was definitely not born of a situation unique to Belgium.

The situation that compelled Bosman to litigate was that his Belgian club refused to let him go to a French team because they were not satisfied with the proposed transfer amount – this despite Bosman having played out his contract. In the meantime he saw his wages reduced given his lack of first team play. That situation could have repeated itself anywhere in Europe or the world at the time, including England. In England, prior to the Bosman ruling, transfer fees were also applicable even for a player out of contract. In England, in the case of no agreement on a transfer request, the case would have been sent to arbitration, and the player would then be “allowed” to move. Whether or not England’s system at the time would have solved Bosman’s specific dilemma is debatable; what is not debatable is that the system in England still upheld the notion of transfer fees on completed contracts, therefore aiding restriction of trade.

Bosman petitioned the European court on two counts:
a. prohibiting a football club from requiring and receiving payment of a sum of money upon the engagement of one of its players who has come to the end of his contract by a new employing club;
b. prohibiting the national and international sporting associations or federations from including in their respective regulations provisions restricting access of foreign players from EC to the competitions which they organize.

The effects of the decision were a) to abolish transfer fees for out of contract players; b) removal of “foreign player” limits – at least amongst EU community players – from local federation and EUFA regulations.

Thanks to Bosman an English player like Steve McManamman could leave for Real Madrid and negotiate a higher salary for himself (given that Real had extra dough from not have to pay a transfer fee to his previous club, which he had fully served).

Thanks to Bosman an English club like Arsenal can line up with more non-British players than local players. Same goes for Inter Milan and Italian players, Real Madrid and Spanish nationals, etc.

Bosman was not born of a situation unique to Belgium.

To say that there “were not hordes of players demanding such freedom of contract beforehand” is a non sequitur. How many players today would rather go back to the pre-Bosman days? How many would give up their rights to free pass and unlimited movement within Europe? Probably less than zero.

Without strong leadership and organizations that can defend their existing gains – given the natural fear of losing what you currently have – its not unusual at all for any class of workers to stay relatively silent on issues that affect their livelihood if they fear the alternative. It is not unusual for moderately educated athletes not to want to rock the boat. But had they had true collective bargaining power on a European scale, it would not have taken a sole individual, Bosman, to shoulder the brunt of litigation to achieve a right that players now view as fundamental.

Many papers have been written on the subject. If anyone is interested, here’s a one page synopsis by a British player management firm that encapsulates it well.

http://www.ritchiehunter.com/articles/bosman.html

 

Revenue sharing is definitely not in effect throughout Europe, let alone the world, so kudos to the English players association. Again, the need for strong player organizations is highlighted here, not weakened.

However, I doubt that “most pros have 15 year careers.” I’ve watched the old First Division and current Premiership football since ’75 and have rarely seen 17 and 18 year olds hold roster spots on clubs (that why the Rooney’s of the world are exceptional). Assuming guys break through the highest level at 20, they would need to play until 35 to have a 15 year career. Based on normal distribution a good 50% of that population would have careers at the top flight at or above this 15 year mean! Last I checked, few players percentage wise, are plying their trade in the top league at and past 35 years of age (they exist, but they are not the norm). Then taking into account injury and natural wear and tear due to physical nature of the sport, and general talent turnover implicit with any sport, I find that figure hard to believe. I bow to your knowledge of English football, but I’d have to see your sources for this stat. If the professional footballer’s association is as well organized as advertised they have to have such statistics (they need it for any pension fund planning and negotiations).

Brazil plays less than 1 friendly per month, and never during months when engaged in official FIFA and CONMEBOL competitions. Add that to the fact that they do not play any Copa America qualifiers, and they end up playing roughly the same number of combined international friendly and official matches as any other national team of note, say Italy, over a four year period. Therefore Rivaldo and R. Carlos’ laments about being over-taxed are valid within a European context as well.

No clash was implied. My suggestion was that you could reduce the number of international fixtures by eliminating the need for both Euro and WC qualifiers (given that they produce approximately same list of teams). This is being done in Africa, and I believe it will come to pass in Europe in the future as well. Only time will tell which one of us is right on this one.