Bremen (dpa) - In response to the loss of income during the Corona crisis, Bundesliga soccer club Werder Bremen has been building so-called "pandemic clauses" into newly concluded player contracts since this summer.
These clauses are intended to ensure that, in certain cases, wage losses take effect automatically, without first having to negotiate a waiver with the players. "We want and have to secure ourselves for the financial losses that can arise," said sports director Frank Baumann the Internet portal "Deichstube". "The purpose of the clause is to ensure that the players also do their part in overcoming financial problems."
According to a report by Bremen's "Weser-Kurier", the "pandemic clause" applies in two cases: Should the Bundesliga season be interrupted again and the Werder home games should continue to take place without spectators. In the first case the wage losses are greater than in the second.
Similar corona-related contractual clauses already exist in ice hockey, basketball and also at Werder rival FC Schalke 04. Nevertheless, the response in the Bundesliga is divided for the time being. "In the end, everything has to be legally clean," said Wolfsburg sports director Jörg Schmadtke of the "Deichstube", because: "Can an employee be held responsible for the outbreak of a pandemic?" The Mainz sports director Rouven Schröder, however, calls such clauses in player contracts "absolutely desirable".
RB Leipzig's CEO Oliver Mintzlaff has spoken out in favor of a joint solution for the Bundesliga on the issue of stipulating a salary waiver in player contracts as a so-called pandemic clause.
"Basically we have to worry if the situation doesn't improve, if we only have limited capacities over a longer period of time or if we have the third, fourth, fifth wave. That is certainly a topic that we should ideally deal with as a league as a whole should, "said the 44-year-old. So far everyone tries to find an individual solution. "We did that too," reported Mintzlaff. At the start of training, he explained to the team council "which hole Covid-19 is tearing into us too."
By the end of the year, the players like the management team and the management at RB would forego part of their salary. Mintzlaff gave no information about the height. "The subject is something that we should and must grapple with in order to define the subject more clearly in the future," he said.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 200817-99-195824 / 3
Homepage of Werder Bremen
Report at deichstube.de