Dusseldorf (dpa) - CEO Thomas Röttgermann of Fortuna Dusseldorf has spoken in favor of an upper salary limit in professional football.
"Rules are required in order not to endanger the development of clubs and football as a whole. We should now think and discuss them urgently," said Röttgermann of the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung". The 59-year-old referred to salary limits in US sports. It was possible to "calculate upper salary limits based on the total turnover of the respective club".
The current financing model for professional football is "extremely risky", warned Röttgermann. At the Bundesliga club in Düsseldorf, wages for football professionals make up 45 percent of total sales. "Player salaries are a big part of spending, and you're in a perpetual rat race with clubs from the same league and international clubs," said the Fortuna boss. He also called for a Europe-wide debate on the subject because of the consequences of the Corona crisis.
Christian Seifert, Managing Director of the German Football League, had previously told ZDF: "A lot of people rightly ask the question: if player salaries are actually reasonable, transfer fees are reasonable. And the question is more than justified" Seifert assured that the DFL would now "Very well think about what the economic, or maybe also the value foundation of the Bundesliga will look like in the future."
Röttgermann emphasized that he was calling for "no clumsy weakening of the strong to the advantage of the weaker". Financially strong clubs should not lose their competitive advantage achieved through good work. "But the spread that we see in the German and European leagues in terms of finance and player salaries is a problem," said Röttgermann.
Board of Fortuna Düsseldorf
