Report urges many changes for football

The gap between rich and poor grows. Scandals and gambling issues have become part of the usual routine. Some hold their possessions dearly, grudgingly sharing what they have. That could apply to many facets of life, but those are central issues that have reared up lately and caused consternation in football.
 
The European Union wanted to find a way to clean up the game and make it plagued less by scandal, dominated less by the power clubs and make clubs more the old-fashioned type with homegrown, club-raised talent.
 
As such, Jose Luis Arnaut, a Portuguese minister, was handed the task of listening to many of the sides involved FIFA, UEFA and the power clubs known as the G 14 and releasing a report detailing suggestions to change the game.
 
When that report the “Independent European Sport Review” was released this past week, it bordered in some ways on the radical and in some ways as a throwback to the older days.
 
Arnaut’s suggestions went out in a 165-page report detailing the problems and giving solutions for fixing football. Among the suggestions were that salary controls should be instituted, more home-grown players should be groomed by clubs and more governance should be in place to deter the match-rigging operations that have appeared.
 
The report also suggested that UEFA should “partner” with the European Union to find ways to implement ideas in the report.
 
In a victory for FIFA and a blow for the G14, the report also suggested that there should be no issues in clubs releasing players for national team duty, and no compensation for the loss of the player.
 
According to the report, there should be, “legal protection for the player release rule, foreseeing that clubs have to release their players for national team duty without entitlement to compensation.”
 
But the report is far from a mandate. As of yet, there are no laws on the books making these suggestions requirements. The governing bodies and governments are expected to go through months of debate before submitting their own ideas by year’s end.
 
The wheels of government and of governing bodies will be turning. The G14 clubs have a meeting this week, specifically dealing with the report. Among the topics will be the problems of match-fixing and the health of the game on the continent.
 
The European Union will discuss the report politically in June, but Arnaut suggested the governing body with the most important role is UEFA, especially in the area of salary controls, where clubs going against each other for players’ services has amounted to what Arnaut called an “arms race.”
 
“The authority of football, not the governments or the European Union, need to do something about this widening gap between the rich clubs and poorer ones,” Arnaut said.
“We fully support the introduction of a control on salaries for players in Europe, but the rich clubs must learn to understand this.”
 
Maybe they do. As Minister of Sport Richard Caborn said the G14 have accepted the likelihood of cost controls, a major shift in policy for the group of clubs.
 
Some are rooting for the salary caps, others are obviously opposed. Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, made comparisons that actors and CEOs of major corporations are not handcuffed by financial limitations, and then relied upon the most basic economic principal to make his point.
 
“It’s supply and demand they don't hold a gun to their owner’s head,” Taylor said. “Football is a very precarious career that lasts a short time.”
 
While salary caps are perhaps the most controversial aspect of the report, it’s not the only item to be a point of contention. The report suggested more development of home-grown players, and made a most unflattering remark in saying that some clubs were “trafficking” in players from developing nations and that there were serious issues that “racism” is becoming too commonplace in the game.
 
No one was spared being roughly handled in the report. Questionable ownership groups were brought under fire as a possible reason gambling and match-rigging have become common headlines recently.
 
A passage of the report made some clubs and outfits seem to border on organised crime groups.
 
“(Problems are) ownership of clubs by questionable individuals or organizations,” according to the report, “the risk to integrity of sport, particularly as a result of sophisticated international betting operations, the boom in the player agent ‘industry,’ which adds little if any value to the sport, a tendency towards racism in certain areas.
 
“(There is a need) to take decisive action to combat any criminal activities associated with football, in particular regarding the trafficking of young players and the risk of money laundering.”
 
With the unsavory mention of “trafficking” in players, the report countered that with the idea of a grassroots system of players grown and raised by the club.
 
“An effective system for encouraging local education of players, based on the obligation for all clubs to have a certain number of homegrown players in their squads coupled with a squad size limitation, (should) be permitted,” according to the report.
 
It’s a major first step, but it is just that a first step. Now comes the waiting and debating. Governments and governing bodies must generate something useful from the report, or it’s likely nothing will change except the gap between the rich and the poor will continue to grow larger.