"It's like doping in the Tour de France: there are doped people who get caught, and those who don't get caught." Guest of the show Facing listeners, Sunday on Europe 1, Mourad Boudjellal does not mince his words to evoke the "salary cap", the regulation which caps the payroll authorized to rugby clubs. "I am not happy that a club is sanctioned," he asserts about the Saracens, who have been fined several times across the Channel for not respecting these rules.
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"Toulon was optimizing the salary cap"
The former sports leader points in particular to the risk of impact on the staff of the English club, reigning European champion, sentenced to a 50,000 euro fine in early February. "They exceeded (the salary cap, note) essentially to keep their grown players," he says. "When you have formed a lot of very good ones, that raises the salary cap. I have always proposed to the League that the players trained at the club do not enter the salary cap. We lower it by a million, two million, three million but training should not be penalized. "
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Could French clubs soon find themselves in the same situation? "I can tell you that in the Top 14, there are several teams that exceed the salary cap," says Mourad Boudjellal, acknowledging that Toulon was "optimizing the salary cap" when he was president. "There are regulations which allow you, sometimes, to adapt while remaining borderline, but inside. (...) The team which made the double (by winning the championship of France and Europe in 2014, note), it does not respect today's salary cap . "