Power to the Players: Labor Policies and Soccer

The Spanish Federation’s announcement last week that Africans would no longer count as non-EU players passed with little notice (but I thank Joseph for bringing it to my attention). The decision was made to keep La Liga in line with the Cotonou agreement, ratified last year by the Spanish parliament, which treats workers from 77 African, Caribbean, and Pacific nations as EU workers. Thus, players already playing in Spain from such countries – the most notable being Barcelona’s Samuel Eto’o and Real Madrid’s Mahmadou Diarra – will no longer take up one of the three non-EU roster spots per match that teams are permitted, nor will future signings.

This agreement is the latest example of labor policies having a particularly marked effect in the world of soccer. Soccer often seems disconnected from the real world; the effect of labor policies on the sport is one of the ways in which we are reminded that soccer is very much a part of the world we have created.

The effect of this little-noticed decision could be dramatic. The high number of African players in France is due, in no small part, to their being from former French colonies and thus able to qualify easily for work permits (this stands in marked contrast to the England, where there is a fairly strict work permit process by which non-EU players have to prove their exceptional talent). If African players are no longer counted in the non-EU quota, they will likely flock to Spain.

A similar situation to that seen in Spain today arose in Italy in 2000. Then, Andriy Shevchenko was playing and scoring (yes, it was a long time ago) for AC Milan. But, the striker complained that he was still counted as a foreign player despite the fact that Ukraine and Italy had previously signed a labor agreement. After Shevchenko’s repeated complaints that he was being treated as a “second-class citizen” and appeals by AC Milan, he was finally granted EU status.

Andriy Shevchenko (photo: BBC)

These two examples affect only a limited number of players in two countries, but other labor decisions have affected the whole of European football. The EU decision in 1993 to allow free movement of workers throughout its member countries has dramatically affected European leagues. Leagues that previously had quotas of non-Spanish, non-Italian, etc. players were forced to reshape their limits so they only applied to non-EU players. The result has been a dramatic increase in the number of players moving across borders. The heated debates on the number of foreign players in the Premier League, for example, have come about because of the EU decision to allow free movement of its workers.The changes above have been forced by larger labor policies that end up affecting soccer dramatically. There has also been one major decision recently which came directly from the world of soccer. In 1990, Belgian player Jean Bosman sued because he was not permitted to leave his club RFC Liege when his contract had ended. Difficult as it is to believe now, players at the time were still considered property of the team they played for, even when their contract was up. Bosman won his suit and from 1995 on, players were permitted to leave their clubs at the end of their contract.

Jean Bosman surrounded by judges (photo: La Galaxia de Estrellas)

The so-called Bosman ruling had a dramatic effect on European soccer. Clubs such as Ajax, which developed young players received no compensation when their protégés were poached by bigger teams. Players and their agents began to negotiate for contract extensions far before their deals were up, using the threat of leaving for free to pressure the club. Opinions about the effects of the Bosman ruling are mixed, but it is fairly incredible that it was not until 1995 that soccer players gained the right to leave at the end of their contracts. I cannot imagine that other workers would have persisted under this system nearly so long.

A large part of the reason soccer players didn’t complain was because, even before the Bosman ruling, they were, for the most part, making good money. Even if things were exactly as they would have liked, they weren’t that bad.

Since 1995, salaries have increased dramatically. Several players in England make over 100,000 pounds per week. As a result, it’s difficult for many fans to consider them in the same class as themselves. Were a soccer player to complain about labor conditions, he would become the object of scorn among the fans who spend an increasingly high percentage of their earnings following their teams (witness the treatment Rio Ferdinand receiving when renegotiating his most recent contract).

In 2001, the Professional Footballers Association in England threatened to strike over revenue-sharing before striking a deal with the Premier League at the last minute. Given the lack of patience fans in England have shown with big earners complaining about their salaries, I doubt a strike would have earned the players much sympathy. (Union power may be on the decline in the US compared with Europe, but ironically American athletes are much more apt to strike than their European counterparts; see baseball in 1994, American football in 1987, and even the US national team’s threatened strike in 2005.)

Strikes in soccer-playing countries where players are not getting as rich as the Premier League are more common. Latin American leagues are notorious for not paying their players on time, or at all. It was over unpaid salaries and paltry pay that players in Argentina struck in 2001, followed by their Chilean counterparts in 2002 (a union leader there said at the time, “At the moment here in Chile there are players who earn only a hundred dollars a month, and that’s not enough to live decently on”).

In the eyes of some, sports have overtaken religion to become the opiate of the masses. As providers of this opiate, it is often difficult to remember that professional athletes are workers as well. They may be fabulously wealthy, but labor policies designed for all workers affect them just the same.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 6:06 am and is filed under Africa, Economics, Europe, History, In the News, Latin America, North America, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.