Health crisis, TV rights fiasco ... will football players have to lower their salaries?

Twenty-six jobs cut in the Girondins de Bordeaux, 400 PSG employees placed on short-time work: between the health crisis linked to the Covid-19 pandemic and the TV rights fiasco, French football is on the brink.

The accounts of its biggest clubs like Paris or Marseille are sealed.

A drop in the salaries of Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 players was therefore considered as part of a meeting held on Tuesday between player representatives and five club managers including Jean-Michel Aulas (Lyon) and Jean -Pierre Caillot (Reims).

The stakes are high: the payroll represents on average more than 50% of the operating costs of Ligue 1 clubs.

When will the negotiations start?

Listening to the UNFP (National Union of Professional Footballers), there is no time to waste.

The union "invites players to discuss quickly with their clubs to consider ways of reducing their salaries in order to save professional football strongly affected by this crisis and to ensure that the 2020-2021 season comes to an end".

Asked Tuesday on the question, the Parisian goalkeeper Keylor Navas did not seem in such a hurry.

“For the moment, we do not know exactly what will happen, the competition is still ongoing, he said.

During the first confinement we had a salary reduction but the competition was completely stopped.

There, every day, we deserve our salary.

So far we haven't been asked for anything.

"

At the same time, other meetings are planned between players in French football "to consider structural measures in order to participate in a more comprehensive reform of professional football (competition format, limitation of numbers, fees, training, etc.) ", Specifies the League in a press release.

What can happen?

“This story of negotiation with the UNFP is fun!

», Launches an experienced president.

For him, as for many observers, the implementation of a salary reduction has no chance of succeeding.

“For a simple reason,” continues our witness: in football, there is no branch agreement that applies as in other professions.

Seriously, can you imagine the president of PSG going to see Neymar and telling him: you

have to lower your salary, the union agrees?

In reality, there are as many branches as there are contracts.

And it's complicated to go see guys who have fixed-term contracts, some of whom are only six months old, and tell them to cut back.

"

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Sylvain Kastendeuch, co-president of the UNFP, concedes: "The situations are so disparate between all the players that it would have been counterproductive to start on framework or collective measures".

Discussions will therefore take place on a case-by-case basis.

"The only mechanism that can be found for some is a reduction in salary in exchange for an extension", explains a president well aware of the small number of players concerned by such a scenario.

At the end of June 2020, the Marseillais Dimitri Payet thus extended his contract until 2024 by significantly lowering his salary and preparing a retraining at the club.

Concretely, he divided his salary by two for 2020-2021 and by 30% for 2021-2022.

Over the two more years of his contract, from 2022 to 2024, the player agreed to have his base salary reduced by 30-40% and waived his European qualifying bonuses.

What did the April 2020 measurements give?

Last spring, at the time of the premature end of the 2019-2020 season, a non-binding framework agreement for provisional wage cuts was found after long discussions.

But unlike what had happened in other countries, such as Germany at Bayern Munich for example, its implementation had been complicated.

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It is likely to be, again, the same, especially if Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 are not interrupted, unlike last April.

However, Minister Delegate for Sports Roxana Maracineanu said on Tuesday, "in favor of everyone helping us to come out of this crisis with our heads held high."

"We must not exclude this drop in wages, momentary, defined in time," she explained.

Will she be heard?

Monday, André Villas-Boas, the OM coach questioned on the question of possible wage cuts had launched: "The clubs have lost their minds, we have only done bullshit with transfers to 300 million euros.

It might be good that the pandemic causes everyone to question themselves and everyone to calm down.

Maybe this is a good opportunity to change the face of football.

" Perhaps…