On September 18th, FIFPro (English translation: International Federation of Professional Footballers) announced they would be taking legal action against FIFA and UEFA for what they perceived was an unfair playing field in the area of transfer fees.
Here is an excerpt from their complaint:
“The transfer regulations prevent clubs from fairly competing on the market to acquire sporting talent, harming the interests of players, small and medium sized professional teams and their supporters,” the statement reads.
FIFPro’s main cause of concern was the “highly-inflated transfer fees” that appear to dominate European football nowadays.
FIFPro have officially launched legal action against FIFA and UEFA and, in a process that could take up to two years, they are determined to meet these aims:
- Abolition of transfer fees
- Ending the loan system
- Restriction on squad sizes
- Capping payments to agents
- Capping lengths of contracts
Each of these aims are a can of worms in their own right, but the most significant is the abolition of transfer fees. FIFPro’s demand is a hard-line response, but in this current market is it a necessary one?
Historically, the two major developments in the transfer system were the Bosman ruling and The Regulations for the Status and Transfer of Players (RSTP) set in 2001. In short, these two legal actions developed the transfer system we know today, introducing free transfers, transfer windows and allowing players more freedom when seeking a release from their contract. FIFPro believes that the current transfer market goes against the original intentions of these concepts.
The intention was to have a market where players choose a club that is best suited to their needs and can leave their current club with ease while reimbursing them with a transfer fee. This was supposed to create a level and competitive playing field, where players have the freedom to move and clubs have the ability to replace them.
It was a seemingly perfect system, but FIFPro has now stated that it is anti-competitive and favours wealthier clubs. Clubs with access to lucrative media deals and extensive commercial partnerships are able to build up an incredible amount of money and blow away competitors in the transfer market.
The main culprits here reside in the English Premier League. Due to an astronomical £5 billion deal with Sky and BT sports, English clubs have an insane amount of revenue that far exceeds any other European league. This revenue puts these English sides at a direct transfer market advantage to almost every other club across the continent, not due to their trophies or prestige, but due to impressive salaries. In this new era of billion dollar competitions and mega clubs, it is now considered by some that the transfer system has created an environment where the rich get richer. Despite a club being financially reimbursed for it’s players, most still cannot compete in the market due to their lack of extra funding from advertising and media deals.
On top of this, the Premier League has put other leagues at a direct disadvantage by heavily inflating transfer fees. Due to the money that English clubs have available to them, they have set a precedent for paying extremely high prices for signatures. Karl-Heinz Rumenigge, CEO of Bayern Munich, admitted that even the Bavarian giants could not keep up with Premier League transfer fees.
A recent and relevant example of how this issue has caused problems can be seen in the high-profile move of Anthony Martial to Manchester United from AS Monaco. The vice-president of Monaco, Vadim Vasilyev, revealed some damning information on the transfer.
“Initially Martial was not for sale, it was absolutely not planned. Since last week United started to make offers which we declined several times – £21.6m, £28.8m, £36m, even £50.4m with bonuses,” Vasilyev said.
Vasilyev admitted that United returned with an offer so high it was impossible not to accept.
“Right now English football is on a different financial level and if Manchester United decides to buy somebody, it’s very hard to stop them.”
It is a dire sign for football when Manchester United has such funds that they can sign a 19-year-old at a whim when he is not even for sale.
It did not stop there.
Real Madrid and Bayern Munich revealed that Manchester United also chased them with a £76 million bid for Gareth Bale and a bid so high for Thomas Muller that Rumenigge was too shocked to reveal it to the media.
“If I were a bank manager then I would have had to accept it,” Rumenigge said.
This is the source of the issue that FIFPro is attempting to highlight, that the Red Devils have the ability to massively inflate transfer fees to put competitors far behind them.
With this in mind, perhaps a world without transfer fees could be ideal. Economist Stefan Szymanski wrote a 20-page analysis on the footballing landscape without transfer fees.
“The contracts will be shorter. But that’s not enough. So we also have to come up with alternatives to be sure that we will not have an unintended effect. We also need stability – you can make the contracts one, two, three or four years. You can say it will be very difficult for a club or a player to breach their contract.”
Szymanski’s main point was that the landscape would not change too drastically.
“Without a transfer system, the best players will still play at the best clubs,” he wrote.
However, he still admitted it was a risky move.
Another possible solution is a transfer fee cap, limited to a reasonable amount so that every club of every league is on level ground in the market. A transfer cap would also help with player welfare, allowing them to choose which deal is best on a personal basis, rather than for purely financial reasons.
Needless to say, either of these two solutions would create shockwaves in football. Looking back at high-profile transfers, it could be said that the face of the world game would be completely different had these rules been implemented earlier.
On the other hand, many would argue that transfer fees help football. The money paid by clubs creates a circulation effect, where finance moves through the ranks from the biggest club to the smallest. It is a system that seems as though it creates financial equity, however, the introduction of third parties bringing in more money than before, not only grossly increases transfer fees, but as FIFPro claims, the big dollars are staying within big clubs and not flowing throughout the market as it should. The natural flow of money has been completely bypassed by mega-clubs with other sources of income and it is a detriment to their domestic league and transfer market as a whole. Financial Fair Play rules have attempted to combat this by placing regulations on some of the key offenders such as Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain, but they are not even close to a long-term solution.
Issues like capping agent’s fees, squad sizes and ending the loan system are simpler issues in comparison that may see a solution rather soon, but the transfer fee problem is a debate that will certainly rage for many years between FIFA, UEFA and FIFPro. There is no doubting, however, that the current transfer market landscape is ludicrously uneven. FIFPro’s response is a drastic one and perhaps not a stable one, but it might be exactly what football needs to enter a new era of competitive and fair transfers.
Football always has big clubs and smalls clubs, rich and poor. This is unavoidable and simply the landscape that we live in. Those with money will always be able to access better players than the clubs with less, but recent inflations have caused such a disparity between rich and poor that it is clear something must be done.
Is FIFPro’s war with UEFA and FIFA a noble one? Does the system even need changing or will the intended changes have no meaningful effect on fairness in the transfer market? Only time will tell if these are true.
One thing is certain, sooner or later the transfer market is set for a revolution.
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