|
 |   |
|
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Multimedia Central Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities Work in Sports
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|  |
Man United shares slide EU welcomes, criticizes FIFA transfer proposal
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- The European Commission on Friday criticized a key part of the FIFA-UEFA proposals to reform the soccer transfer system but stressed the world and European federations were finally heading in the right direction. The European Union's Executive Commission is investigating complaints that the transfer system is illegal, prompting FIFA and UEFA to make new proposals Thursday, including the scrapping of transfer fees for over-24 players. "FIFA is willing to find a solution," said Commission spokesman Christophe Forax. "We are really optimistic." But the Commission criticized a key part of the plan -- to ban international transfers for players under 18. It would limit young players to clubs within their own country, and seemingly in breach of the EU principle of free movement of workers within the 15 member nations. "There are some principles on which we cannot yield," said Forax. "It is a bad answer to a good question," he said, noting FIFA had proposed the measure to protect young players from abuse. He said the problem could be circumvented by issuing minimum standards for clubs on schooling and training facilities for youngsters. Forax also soothed concerns of the soccer community that the European Union was about to issue a unilateral measure which would turn the whole transfer system topsy-turvy overnight. "There is no ultimatum," he said, adding there was still time for negotiations. In a statement Friday, UEFA Chief Executive Gerhard Aigner said talk of an end to the transfer system was "premature." "We cannot allow dramatic change to happen without a full consideration of the consequences and the alternatives which might be available," he said. "We believe that you cannot look at the transfer system in isolation. The current system, while sometimes open to abuse, does help redistribution within the game and the current contract arrangements are vital to overall stability." During Thursday's meeting at FIFA headquarters in Zurich, a new joint FIFA-UEFA working party offered the concession to abolish transfer fees for players over 24 years old. The current transfer system requires a club buying a player to pay compensation to the club surrendering its player. A soccer player may leave his club at any time as long as the fee is paid. But according to EU employment laws, any employee within the member nations should be able to leave his employment at any time even while under contract and employers should not have the power to demand a fee. Most national legislations force employees who leave while under contract to pay their employer an indemnity, which varies in th 15 EU nations. In order to keep players hopping from one club to another at will -- with no compensation paid to the last club -- the task force suggested a minimum one-year stay with a team. Players could change clubs at the end of that period, but only within an established worldwide annual transfer window. The Commission said it needed to see detailed proposals before commenting further. The Commission said it was happy that after two years of pleading and threats, FIFA was finally coming up with a serious reform proposal. The two soccer bodies were expected to file their proposals with the European Commission over the coming weeks, officials said. The EU forced the soccer bodies to change their transfer rules a first time when the European Court of Justice said in its Bosman ruling transfer fees for out-of-contract players were illegal. Clubs criticize EC planLONDON -- Europe's leading clubs criticized the European Commission on Friday over the threat to scrap the transfer system. Opposition in the Bundesliga was led by champions Bayern Munich. Legendary president Franz Beckenbauer argued abolishing transfer fees would see players go to the highest bidder -- for wages far beyond today's inflated levels. "The amount of money in circulation will remain the same but it will go straight to the players instead of going to the clubs," Beckenbauer said. "Salaries will explode and the players will become even richer.' Bayern also felt let down by the willingness to change shown by FIFA president Sepp Blatter. Soccer's ruling bodies have been spurred into action over the past few weeks due to the EC's insistence that UEFA and FIFA review their rules on transfers immediately to bring them into line with EU regulations on freedom of movement. Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Bayern's vice-president, said: "The clubs take all the risks economically. They are responsible for the contracts, Mr. Blatter is not. "Therefore it is not acceptable to make any changes without consulting the clubs, which are the employers." Threat to transfer fees hits Man United sharesLONDON -- Shares in Manchester United, the world's first soccer club to be worth more than 1 billion pounds (US$1.45 billion), continued to slide Friday amid fears that European authorities will turn all players into free agents. The share price for Manchester United PLC, which operates the team, suffered a 3 percent drop to 292.5 pence each in early trading, before recovering to 295 pence later in the day. The company's shares have plunged 28 percent since peaking in March. Man United is Britain's top-ranked soccer club, having won England's Premier League last season and the league, FA Cup and European Cup in 1999. Much of the reason for the long decline in its stock price lies in investor concerns about a possible European Commission decision to abolish player transfer fees. These are fees that one soccer club pays another in order to take over a player's contract. The aim is to defray the large sums clubs shell out to sign top players. The EC, the executive arm of the European Union, wants to bring soccer into line with regular employment laws in Europe. In an echo of the changes that gave rise to free agents in American baseball, EU Competition Commissioner Mario Monti says athletes should be treated like employees in any other occupation and no be restricted from changing jobs. Soccer's governing body for Europe, UEFA, argues that smaller clubs - the ones which often give stars their start -- would be hurt by losing compensation for unfulfilled contracts. Professional soccer should be treated as a special case, they say. The commission told UEFA and FIFA, the sport's world governing body, to come up with an alternative to the traditional transfer system. In Zurich, Switzerland, world and European soccer chiefs offered Thursday to scrap transfe fees for players over the age of 24. Man United, like other top teams in Europe, could lose millions of pounds if fees are abolished across the board. Top stars like Ryan Giggs and David Beckham -- spouse of former Spice Girl Victoria Adams -- could effectively walk away from the team for free. "Theoretically, you could end up with a player playing each game for a different club," said Nigel Hawkins, an industry analyst at London brokerage Williams de Broe. "All club loyalty [would] become skin deep." If the EC were to ban the practice, Hawkins predicted that small teams would go out of business because they couldn't afford the cost of losing highly paid players to richer rivals. Salaries for top players would probably swell because their new employers would have more money to pay them. "They'll be far better off," with salaries doubling to as much as 100,000 pounds (US$145,000) a week, he said. In this vision of the future, gaps would widen between a handful of wealthy clubs and the mass of other teams that lacked deep pockets to buy and retain the best talent. Games would become more one-sided, many fans would lose interest and TV contracts would become increasingly important as a revenue source. Shares in Man United rivals Leeds, Newcastle and Tottenham Hotspur showed marginal changes Friday, but were all still trading at much less than their all-time highs.
| ||||||||||||||||||||
