Right, but that doesn’t change the process, it’s just a different way of framing your salary demands.
I’ve mentioned it before but a few years ago a Premier League player, upon seeing his payslip, phoned up his club and demanded to know why someone called PAYE was taking nearly half his salary. The club said it was income tax. “Well, I don’t want to pay that” came the reply 
How? If a player says he wants £250k after tax rather than £250k subject to tax that doesn’t change how the tax is paid. It just changes what the club has to write into the contract. First one will be closer to £500k/week, the second one would be £250k/week. In both scenarios the player doesn’t pay the tax - it is deducted “at source” ie by the club and paid directly to the government.
So a pay-slip would, on a very simplistic level, look as follows:
First scenario: Gross salary £500k. Deductions for PAYE £250k. Net income £250k.
Second scenario: Gross salary £250k. Deductions for PAYE £125k. Net income £125k.
Whichever way the player expresses his salary demands the relevant figure for the club is how much gross pay it needs to pay so from a negotiating point of view the club are going to treat a demand for a salary of £250k after tax exactly the same as they would a demand for a salary of £500k subject to tax.
OK, understood.
I think you are right because my mate at work said something similar, I was in the civil service at the time.
We were obviously talking at cross purposes.
What I thought you meant was that if a player was notionally earning £100k per week before tax, the club would pay his Income Tax and Nics contributions of £47k per week, leaving the player with a take home salary of £100k.
This would be seen as tax evasion.
For a player to have a take home salary of £100k per week, he would have to be earning £188k gross per week i.e. the correct Income Tax & Nics deduction would be £88k per week.
Good luck with that lads. I can’t see a conservative government forcing a load of billionaires to surrender their property.
Sadly I think the horse has bolted on that one.
The only way for something like this to be possible would be for the entire game to collapse and be started from the ground up again. At lest as I understand the concept, otherwise it would need fans pitching together to buy 50%+1 of every club, which I can’t see fans being able to get that sort of cash together.
Plus, how to you force an owner to sell half of the club?
Yep, only posting what the BBC have reported. Tbh, there’s very little reference to the 50+1 aspect but it makes for a better headline. There’s no chance that the government will try and impose that so increasing fan involvement (/accountability) will need to be achieved by other means.
Unless, hear me out now, the fans get together to create a breakaway league.
Eh? Eh??
It’s the only way to do it. We have to be conscious that allowing clubs to be in charge in of their own broadcast rights can create such a splintered environment that it ruins it for the fans by limiting what they’re able to watch, or makes it cost prohibitive to keep up with the number of subscriptions services required to get general coverage. To avoid that there has to be a way to maintain some form of centralized contract that can be supplemented by the individual service your preferred club offers.
For reasons I dont understand (i.e. why the expertise is not already within the club), but the buying club will often engage an agent to represent them in a deal. Much like when buying a house. In that circumstance, it is right that those services are paid for by the club and not the player. There are cases where a single agent will represent both parties and take payment from both sides, but, again, I dont get how that is legal.
@Kopstar Can you speak to the club’s agent issue? My understanding is that clubs feel doing this provide them a degree of cover and secrecy that they think is advantageous enough to justify paying out a fee.
Reforming football has to start with having REAL financial fair play.
Just as you don’t have true sporting competition if you cannot be relegated or drop out of a competition, you also don’t have true competition if some teams can simply outspend all the rest and buy titles year after year.
UEFA’s decision to NOT punish Man Cheaty is just as culpable in where we are now in football, as are the clubs that pushed the Super League.
As for the specifics of the Champions League, I’m not a fan of the Swiss model.
If UEFA is dead set on making it bigger, why not simply increase the number of teams to 40 or even 48? And, at the same time, integrate the Europa League into that number. Group stage with either 5 or 6 teams per group, which would then allow for either 8 or 10 group stage games. Top 2 from each group move on to Champs League knockouts. 3rd and 4th place move on to Europa League knockouts. 5th (and 6th) place simply drop out.
Expanding the number of slots for CL does something to appease the “big clubs” that worry about an off season and finishing 5th in their league could leave them in the wilderness, like Liverpool were in for a number of years in the early 2010’s, and Arsenal is now, because in a 40 or 48 team format, you’d have the top 5 qualifying for CL instead of top 4.
I’m not so sure. FFP continues to be misunderstood as a move to create competitive balance, when what it was really brought in for was to legislate financial discipline among the lower tier clubs who were at risk of defaulting. No one was concerned that PSG were going to fail to meet their obligations, but there was real concern that a club like Red Star might. And if they did, then all the clubs in Serbia that they owe money to would be imperiled and due to the interconnectedness of football’s finances, there was the potential for a whole league structure to be brought down. Outside of the Elite clubs, this was reality all across Europe, with a cumulative net loss of billions per year across Europe. It was unsustainable, and the clubs were clearly not taking it upon themselves to rein themselves in. So FFP was not brought in to produce competitive balance or rein in clubs who could afford to spend heavily, it was brought in to legislate financial discipline for clubs who were at risk for not being able to meet their escalating obligations. To that end it was a fantastic success.
For me, the issue with PSG and City is less the unbalancing of the game they can produce with their unlimited capital, but more where the money comes from. Sovereign Wealth Funds, human rights abusers…there are entities that simply not should be able to purchase football clubs.
Yes, there are clear advantages (but also disadvantages and, like you, I don’t like it). Advantages:
Yes, true and good insight. FFP needs to work at both ends of the financial spectrum of clubs.
But I don’t think we can complain about the unfairness of a Super League that offers guaranteed membership, and not about clubs with infinite resources.
Just look at the membership of the Super League, which was supposed to represent the “European royalty” of clubs. Real Madrid, Barca, Liverpool, AC Milan, etc. What the hell were Man City doing in that group, other than being the richest club in the world over the past 10 years? Nottingham Forest or Aston Villa have a better claim to being in a European Super League than City do, if not for the £££££.
I’m
Probably in the minority of not wanting to make drastic changes.
The obvious ones would be that I’d want the PL to be more supportive around arranging fixtures to give the English clubs the best chance in Europe - Spain do this and I wanna say maybe Germany too… not 100% but defo Spain.
The final needs to be majority fan attended so perhaps like 80-90% fan based, 10% sponsors
Minimum capacity of a final stadium 80k
Scrap away goals if the game goes to extra time. The away team basically gets 120mins to score away goals compared to the home team who only got 90 mins in leg one.
