eBusiness Weekly
LONDON. — By Saturday afternoon, after three weeks of impasse, after hearing their morals questioned by politicians and witnessing their clubs start to line up for government bailouts, the players of the Premier League decided to take matters into their own hands.
The captains of the league’s 20 clubs, as well as many of its managers and several executives, dialled into a video-conference meeting with the aim of establishing a collective position on a subject that has threatened to turn the English public against English soccer at a time of national crisis.
Somehow, as the country’s death toll from the coronavirus pandemic has started to mount, the issue of whether the stars of the Premier League — the richest domestic soccer tournament on the planet and one of Britain’s proudest cultural exports — should take a pay cut has moved front and centre.
How soccer — which was placed on indefinite hiatus in England on March 13 — has found itself cast as one of the villains of the crisis speaks volumes not only about the political reality of the game in England but also of the singular role it plays in the national psyche.
Now, clubs accustomed to the unyielding loyalty of fans have managed to alienate even their most ardent followers. Players, more accustomed to being seen as heroes, have been accused not only of failing to help their teams stanch losses, but of the much more serious offense of not offering financial support to Britain’s overworked health service.
In the space of three weeks, a discussion that started with the question of how the richest domestic soccer league in the world will ride out the economic impact of the shutdown has led to its stars starting their own initiative — independent of their clubs — to funnel part of their salaries straight to the National Health Service.
It did not start out like this. Talks over what role the players might have in alleviating the virus’s financial impact on the clubs that pay their salaries began in the middle of March, just a few days after the postponement of the Premier League season.
At first, the process was relatively straightforward, essentially a discussion between employers, concerned about a sudden cash-flow crisis, and their best-paid employees.
Officials from the Premier League’s London headquarters, acting on behalf of the clubs, and representatives from the players’ union, the Professional Footballers Association, gathered in a virtual meeting room, joined by executives from the League Managers Association, an umbrella group for coaches, and the English Football League, the governing body for the three lower-tier professional leagues.
All involved thought those talks had progressed positively enough.
The Premier League initially suggested that all of its players take a 15 percent salary cut for the rest of the year; it claimed its clubs needed to save 280 million pounds, or $347 million, in order to make up for lost revenue. The union said it would be able to make a decision only if it saw each team’s financial forecast.
They cycled through various suggestions — a 25 percent cut and a 15 percent deferral, suggested by the league; no cuts, but a series of deferrals, proposed by the union.
Then they focused on a combination of cuts and deferrals that amounted to a figure of 30 percent, for a year, that could be reduced depending on how much of their losses the clubs could claw back.
That seemed to form the outline of an eventual agreement.
But on March 31, Tottenham Hotspur followed Newcastle United’s lead and placed most of its non-playing staff on furlough, effectively asking the British government, in accordance with public welfare laws, to pay 80 percent of their salaries for the next three months. The remainder would simply go unpaid. A few days later, Liverpool made the same announcement, before being forced to backtrack.
Tottenham’s move was greeted with derision and anger — not just from fans, but from players, too. It was the moment a commercial negotiation suddenly morphed into something far larger and far more damaging to all sides: a conversation, in essence, about soccer’s role and responsibilities in public life.
A group of athletes, led by the Liverpool captain, Jordan Henderson, had already been discussing setting up a charitable fund to help the National Health Service. Others, including the Manchester United striker Marcus Rashford, had started private initiatives to help provide meals to underprivileged children. — New York Times.
