Kylian Mbappé is the second highest paid player in Ligue 1 behind Neymar.
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FRANCK FIFE / AFP
With the economic crisis linked to Covid-19 and the Mediapro fiasco, French football could lose between 500 and 800 million euros according to the sources.
The situation is such that nearly a third of professional clubs are threatened in their survival in the short or medium term.
To save French football, the issue of lowering player salaries is growing every day.
Unimaginable a few years or even a few months ago, when money flowed freely through the veins of French football, infused by income from TV rights, ticket revenues and money from the transfer window, the drop in player salaries. is no longer a taboo for anyone today.
It is even now obvious to the vast majority of people in the field, while a meeting is held Thursday between the UNFP - the union of professional players - and certain presidents of Ligue 1 at the origin of this call for help.
Everyone is aware of this, therefore, starting with the main stakeholders.
Asked before the truce on the subject, Paul Baysse, the defender of the Girondins de Bordeaux and member of the UNFP steering committee, set an example.
“We know that the clubs are in difficulty with the health crisis and the affair with Mediapro does not help.
It is not easy and we are aware of the situation.
Last June, we had already been asked to lower our salaries and everyone was in favor of that to help the club.
If we have to go through this, we will all be united.
I think everyone is ready to make financial efforts.
We are all in the same boat, ”he declared, followed since by his teammate Laurent Koscielny.
“We all know the context.
Everyone will surely have to go through this.
We're all gonna have to tighten our belts.
"Further east, in Reims, Xavier Chavalerin also thinks collectively:" If we have to do it to save the clubs and the people who work for us on a daily basis such as housekeepers or those who wash our belongings, we will. ".
"Mediapro is the last straw"
These speeches imbued with solidarity are out of tune on the part of footballers willingly accused of navel-gazing and singled out for their disconnection from the real world.
This is because in addition to the Covid crisis which emptied the stadiums and the boxes of clubs, Hurricane Mediapro served as a devastating second wave, to the point that the pure and simple survival of certain Ligue 1 clubs and Ligue 2 is now in play. On the L'Equipe channel Monday evening, sports economist Pierre Rondeau estimated suspiciously that a third of French pro clubs could close shop in the short or medium term if nothing was done by then.
“Mediapro is the last straw, but let's say that the vase was already very, very full,” says Christophe Lepetit, head of economic studies at the CDES in Limoges.
Other clubs in Europe, and among them very large ones like Barça for example, have started to embark on the path of salary reduction.
Which means that, even without the Mediapro crisis, most likely the clubs should have come to the negotiating table with the players to consider such a measure.
"
The famous negotiating table.
An expression that we are more used to hearing in our news when Philippe Martinez storms into the Elysee to save jobs at Continental.
But it clearly shows the urgency of the situation.
"It risks being a murderous spring if there are no economic arrangements in the club model," warns LREM deputy Cédric Roussel, co-president of the sports economics group at the National Assembly, who is working very seriously on setting up a
salary cap
on a French or even European scale.
Salary, the first adjustment variable
“In the“ expenses ”part of the clubs, the weight of the payroll is very important in most French clubs [roughly, depending on the club, between 40 and 70% of expenses come from salaries].
So mechanically it is also there that we must go to seek savings, analyzes the deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes.
We hear a lot of good intentions in recent years, the time has come to act.
Very well, but how?
Because if everyone agrees that we must save the soldier League of Talents, the meeting on Thursday will at best result in what is called a framework agreement.
However, this will have absolutely no binding legal value for the players.
“If there is agreement, engages Christophe Lepetit, then everyone in the clubs will have to make an effort and that the leaders negotiate on a case-by-case basis to get through the crisis.
“Because with an average salary of 94,000 euros and an estimated median salary of around 35,000 euros, the disparities are immense within a locker room.
Invited to think aloud during a first article on the subject that we published last April, Olivier Delcourt, the Dijon president, explained the mathematical puzzle.
Averages of gross monthly salaries in Ligue 1. 💰 pic.twitter.com/g9gfzaD9hM
- Football News (@ActuFoot_) February 7, 2020
“It should be proportional based on salaries.
In Dijon, the smallest salary in the locker room must be around 5,000 euros, the largest around 100,000. The two cannot be put in the same basket, he said.
And then the players earn a lot compared to the rest of society, but they have a corresponding standard of living.
"" They have loans, investments, charges, continues Lepetit.
They signed contracts, they are employees to whom we owe money, they can say "ok, I agree to make an effort now to pass the
cut
, but I would like to get my money back later. "
"
Rethinking the economic model as a whole
It is also one of the big questions of the moment: will these wage cuts be part of the time or is it just a
one-shot
story to bail out the ship?
The uncertain horizon on the front of the pandemic and vaccination, combined with the probable "very strong discount of future TV rights", dixit Lepetit, rather encourage us to lean for the first option.
The economist of the CDES, always: “If we think in the longer term, we must rethink the overall regulation of professional football and we must make the sector both more solid and more sustainable.
But this regulation cannot be based only on a simple salary cap which would solve nothing at all if it were put in place on its own.
We need global regulation at the global or at least European level, regulation of the labor market, the transfer market, financial regulation and wage regulation.
This is how we will improve the system and not by making small changes here and there.
"
Take it or leave it ?
With, at the end of the day, a deep overhaul of the European football landscape that could look like this: the end of long contracts, drastically reduced numbers by the end of the stacking of players under contracts and, perhaps, a sharp increase in the player unemployment curve.
This is what recently confided to us an agent well established in Ligue 1: “For me we are going towards a huge explosion in the number of unemployed in football.
Not all players see it today but it will be very hot.
We will return to a workforce of 23 players with 4 or 5 who will be paid between 5,000 and 10,000 euros.
"
Is there still exile?
“Not even, slice Lepetit.
The crisis does not affect France and foreign clubs will no longer offer big contracts with all their hands.
Apart from the top players who will remain in a strong position in the salary negotiations, 80%, even 90%, of the players will undergo these negotiations and will not have much choice but to accept.
Because they do not really know if they will be able to find another club and under what conditions.
Out of this mass of players there, few will have real bargaining power and we will certainly have to accept this drop in income.
"
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