It is not good to be president of Ligue 1 these days. While the coronavirus health crisis paralyzes French football and its finances, the president of Amiens, Bernard Joannin, tries to analyze its impact on the clubs of the championship. With wisdom and avoiding any alarmism.
Canal +, the main broadcaster of the L1, refuses to pay on April 5 the penultimate contractual deadline it owes to the LFP, ie € 110 million. Are you worried about that?
BERNARD JOANNIN. Not necessarily. We must open up a dialogue between the different parties. The trade conflict exists continuously, and it is through this dialogue that solutions will be found. For the consequences this will have on our clubs, you should never imagine the worst. We must also understand why the League's broadcasting partner has this reaction, and find a common path. All actors must remain positive.
What economic solutions do you imagine to get out of the crisis, so that French clubs limit breakage?
There is only one solution: recovery. You cannot live without recipes. If your newspaper doesn't pay you your salary, I think you're going to be able to last a month, maybe two. But you will be in trouble beyond. The government and all the health officials in this country are working to overcome the pandemic, I think they will succeed and life will resume, as will our economic situations.
Could it be a solution to get part of the TV rights for next season in advance?
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I'm used to not spending the money I don't have. So let's continue the dialogue with our current broadcasters, BeIN Sports and Canal +. Let's try to find a solution, we still have time. The master of the game remains the pandemic, let's wait for its disappearance before resuming the championship, after a period of player re-athletics. If we manage to finish the season between July 15 and July 30, everything will be back in order from an economic point of view.
But even if the championships resume quickly in the best of cases, where will we have to find all the money that has been lost?
You know, being a business manager as we are, we club presidents, is accepting to have a risky life. Risk is part of a business. And there is always a solution. I can't tell you where and when, but the football companies will be reborn from this crisis.
Have you implemented partial unemployment for your players?
Of course, this is precisely a reaction from an entrepreneur. You don't have recipes, and your collaborators, the players, don't work. So you have no choice.
Amiens SC temporarily suspends the sports activities of all its teams until further notice 👉 https://t.co/uc1XRPeZGi#RestezChezVous 🏡🖤🤍 pic.twitter.com/Ufoya7Y4SI
- Amiens SC (@AmiensSC) March 17, 2020With all this financial uncertainty, what will the next transfer window look like after the crisis has passed?
In Amiens, from a financial point of view, we imagined all cases. Let it be the worst scenarios, like the best. We can be in working order in the face of any outcome to this crisis. Football as a whole would suffer a lot if we went to the darkest assumption, that is to say that we did not finish the season and that we did not enjoy all the TV rights expected. But let us remain positive, and imagine that this pandemic, thanks to all the efforts that the French are currently making with this containment, will return to order as quickly as possible. And, above all, that our lives become simpler again, with pleasures like football.
What do you say to citizens in difficulty who take offense that sometimes very wealthy players can benefit from financial aid from the State?
We must already explain what short-time working is: limited state aid will go to the benefit of the company. Who will then pay players 70% of their gross salary. State aid will therefore be the same for all French people, according to a basic salary which, if it has not yet been voted, is at most 4.5 times the minimum wage. Take the case of the Parisian Neymar, speaking: if he is placed on technical unemployment, state aid would be capped at around 6,900 euros for him. It must be said precisely, it avoids controversy. Everyone is equal before the law. If the players are not working, it is normal for aid to go to all of the French workers who cannot carry out their mission.
