Compensation, Clubs, Country: A Response
My worthy colleague here at Soccerlens recently posted his opinions on the player injury compensation issue.
I’d like to add my tuppence to the discussion. It is all well and good to criticize clubs for being money-mad institutions who don’t care about the impoverished national federations who are only there for the good of the game. What needs to be considered is that national associations earn quite a lot of money from gate receipts, advertisements and playing fees from continental federations and FIFA.
Teams like Togo and Angola aside (they don’t have any ultra-high earners in their squad anyway), the English FA earns huge money from endorsements from giant corporations such as AxA and McDonald’s, not to mention the massive money coming in from Umbro’s kit deals (they release a new kit at the blink of an eye).
When such huge money is being earned, why balk at paying a million pounds or so for a player that was injured while on duty for the FA, not the club. This is an FA that pays 4.5 million pounds to Sven Goran Eriksson as reward for being the clueless mongloid that he is. This is an FA that can afford to set up expensive training retreats to places like Portugal and Dubai.
My only issue is: when the FA itself functions as a financial entity, why should it be treated any different from a football club? If they represent the interests of national football in England, what about interests of people that spend their hard-earned money to buy season tickets at Newcastle United? When Newcastle are forced to buy a player to replace Owen for the duration of his injury, and are forced to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds to a specialist for his rehabilitation, who bears the cost? The paying fans of that football club.
My solution is to set up and arbitration panel for smaller clubs and poorer nations, but federations of countries like England, Germany, Italy and Spain should be able to spend their cash on a player that was injured while in their care, instead of spending it on things like a rubbish overrated manager and a bunch of awards ‘galas’.
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Discussion - 4 Responses
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Valid points. My intention was to start a discussion, and thank you for continuing it.
Personally I’m split on the issue and I favor the clubs, but it’s not as simple as just asking the FA to pay for rehabilitation. The specific injuries that I’m talking about (Owen and Cisse) were both unfortunate and not as a result of the player being put under undue risk (Owen fell on his own, while Cisse’s break was more of a freak accident than a heavy tackle).
As such, do the clubs really have to hold the countries responsible? Newcastle would have had to sign another striker anyway if Owen had the same injury during the InterToto Cup matches in mid july.
I agree that the national associations should be responsible, but it should also be on a case by case issue, not a blanket solution.
My initial response is missing Ahmed
I don’t think you can distinguish between what is a valid reason for compensation and what isn’t. Quite simply if a player is somewhere he wouldn’t otherwise be because he is playing for his country then anything that happens to that player is that country’s F.A.’s responsibility.
I don’t believe a club should be made to pay for ‘loaning’ their players to their country.
A bit like being on vacation and having adequate insurance to cover every eventuality whilst on that vacation - from leaving your door until you return home.
FrogFish:
Your comment was on my post - this is by another author, in reponse to my post.
The link is: http://soccerlens.com/clubs-demand-compensation-for-injured-players/1326164.html
“Newcastle would have had to sign another striker anyway if Owen had the same injury during the InterToto Cup matches in mid july.”
Yes but the fact is he had the injury when he was playing for england. If he had not been selected for the england squad he wouldn’t have had the injury.
He wasn’t fully fit when he played for england yet they played him putting him at risk of breaking down which he obviously did.
Had he not played for england then he would have had more time to recover and gain his fitness in preparation for the intertoto cup.