Premier League wage stand-off showing the very worst of football as angry players stand defiant against owners – the independent, independent
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The Premier League captains were at first stunned, and then apoplectic. The mood has not changed much since, and could have significant repercussions.
When the Premier League issued a wide-ranging statement on 3 April that said they may ask the players for a per cent wage cut or deferral, the assumption from many – and even some of the most prominent figures in the game – was that this had at least been run past the captains, or the Professional Footballers’s Association (PFA).
That actually hadn’t been the case, which makes it all the more remarkable that the clubs talked themselves down from an initial figure of per cent in that Friday videoconference.
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The wonder is how the players would have reacted to that. It was bad enough with 39 per cent. They went “ballistic”, in the words of one source. The same individual describes it as a “spectacular failure” in communication on the part of the Premier League clubs, which really “alienated” the players.
It could yet mean the various parties keep failing to strike an agreement on this issue for some time, and that it gets very ugly.
The picture isn’t all that good right now. A time of international crisis has seen the national sport descend into disagreement between millionaires and billionaires, over money.
It just looks like the worst of football, at the worst of times, summing up a supposed moral bankruptcy in the game.
The true picture is naturally more complicated than that, but otherwise all the more difficult to sort out. The key difference is not financial status, and that between millionaire players and billionaire owners.
It is actually one of outlook and objective for this, that is not solely motivated by greed or self-interest or any of the other loaded words thrown around.
It really comes down to this. The players are perfectly willing to give up significant money, as they have made clear, but want it all to go to the National Health Service or other charitable funds.
The clubs say they badly need the money to stay within their businesses – in order to survive. This is the principal problem, that has so far not seen even the suggestion of a solution. Making the situation even harder is that, within those differences, there are the sort of decisions that could yet make a huge difference in so many other lives – above all whether club employees can be paid.
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