Should Footballers have "Proper" contracts

Following on from the article that @dubai_phil posted on the VVD thread (this one)

Do we now see the beginning of the end to the current way footballers’ contracts and the transfer market works?

Let’s discount youth from the discussion at the moment as that needs special consideration!

Would you agree that the transfer market now needs to end and players need to start signing contracts more in line with your average Joes work contract. I have a contract for where I work, if I want another job I put my feelers out, get offered a job by another compnay (if I’m lucky) and then hand my notice is.

Currently my notice period is 3 months so I would have 3 months of handing things over etc. etc. etc.

Can you see this working in the Professional Footballers sphere, i.e. they sign a contract that has a 3 month notice period in it (not fixed term, that’s another ara for discussion). If you get tapped up by a big club you hand in your notice and either play for 3 months or sit on the bench because your a disruptive influence (gardening leave).

What do you all think?

I don’t think I’m keen. The ridiculous transfer fees wouldn’t go away, they’d just end up getting paid to players & agents rather than clubs.

Perhaps if a player signs a fixed term contract and decides they want out then they should be made to buy out the value of the remainder of their contract - but this is on top of the clubs then horse trading that players registration. No agents to be involved in this bit. Once that is done the personal terms can be agreed with the new club.

Any agent or club found to have been involved in tapping up or leaking stories to the media would be fined half of the total fee for purchasing the players registration- with an automatic 15 point deduction for the club. The agent to be banned for life. Any media outlet complicit in promoting any proposed move to offer any pay per view matches free for the whole season.

I’m not a details guy so I’ll leave it to everyone else to work out the detail…

Just get rid of agents. Let these fuckers negotiate their own pay rises and moves.

I’m sure clubs in the lower leagues wouldn’t welcome one of the ways they keep their heads above water. With just a small revenue from TV rights, sponsorship and advertising the occasional unearthing a gem of a young player would mean no financial boost from a transfer fee.

I agree with @simon-says - it’s agents that are the problem.

It would be better if parasitic agents were banned altogether and the PFA offered an ‘in-house’ agents department which all pro players were signed up to. That way they could have salaried (not commission-based) agents who genuinely look after the best interests of the players and negotiate with clubs re pay and image rights, contracts, etc.

Players would still make a shit ton of money, transfers would still cost a fortune, but players wouldn’t be engineering moves on the say-so of the agent’s pay-off.

1 Like