Wenger sees 'the end of transfer fees'
Arsenal manager says the power has shifted from clubs to players
Three decades ago, when Arsène Wenger was earnestly failing to establish himself as a professional footballer of note at Strasbourg, the financial dominion of clubs went without challenge. No player left a team without the express permission of his employers. A club owned a footballer's registration until choosing to relinquish it for whatever price they deemed fit. When neither a new contract nor a transfer could be agreed, clubs could lawfully prevent their employees playing for any other club without paying him another centime.
So effectively did football control the salaries of its performers that the 20m (£15.7m) a season Real Madrid are currently enticing Cristiano Ronaldo with would cover the wages of an entire league season of the Wenger era. 'Inflationary' is one term the Arsenal manager uses to describe the transfer system that lends Ronaldo the confidence to demand his exit from Manchester United one season into a five-year contract. 'The wild west' is another he employs to capture the actions of players, agents and predator chairmen in football's new order. Allow its logic to run the full course, he argues, and transfer fees may completely cease to exist.
Though the market has yet to reach the stage where Ronaldo is free to march off to Madrid without compensation for United, the combination of external temptation and personal desire bears parallel to Nicolas Anelka's move from Arsenal to the Bernabéu nine summers ago.
'Contract-wise, the club is always in a weaker position,' said Wenger of the Ronaldo situation at a Castrol-backed Euro 2008 event. 'Why? Because clubs only have the security of a player now for three years. And that's why, when a player is in his second year, it's difficult. You are in a weak situation as a club.
'OK, you can think, "I can leave this guy here if he sulks and play him in the reserves." But it doesn't work. It's a good solution in theory, but on a daily basis it's impossible. That's why, in the end, I said I will only sell Anelka if he says to me, "I want to leave". What can you do with a player who doesn't want to stay?'
The legal framework gradually structured around football since Jean-Marc Bosman successfully challenged restrictions on freedom of movement in 1995 means that, in many circumstances, a club can do nothing. In the wake of the European Court of Justice ruling, Fifa drafted a set of internationally binding regulations determining the maximum length of contracts, circumstances under which a player could terminate them and compensation levels for transfers.
Introduced in 2003 and restated two years later, Fifa's 'Regulations for the Status of and Transfer of Players' is a 38-page document of intentionally convoluted legalese. While the compromise deal prevented more hawkish European Union bureaucrats from abolishing transfer fees in their entirety and allowed clubs to continue signing footballers to multi-season contracts, the shades of grey of several central provisions have gradually become apparent to those intent on negotiating increasingly grand remuneration.
Critically, the Fifa regulations allowed a player who agreed his contract when under the age of 28 to terminate it after three seasons 'without just cause' as long as he informs his club of his intention to do so and pays appropriate compensation. Though the level of such damages went unspecified, the test case that followed Andy Webster's decision to use the rule to leave Hearts for Wigan in 2006 determined that sum as the outstanding value of a player's contract (in the Scotland defender's case, £150,000).
The result, according to Wenger, is that a modern footballer's contract effectively secures a player's services for just two seasons, regardless of the length formally agreed in the paperwork. 'After two years you have to renegotiate your contract because after three years the player can move out,' Wenger says. 'You give longer contracts because it offers a little bit of protection for the player to have to pay compensation if he moves after three years - if you give a player a five-year contract and he moves after three, he has to pay two years' [wages].
'But, after two years, you have to re-negotiate with the player because he can move the next season; you have no choice. For me, this measure is inflationary. Why? Because after two years you have to sit down with the player, whether he has played well or not, or you will lose him. You can never get him to sign an extension to his contract for less - that means you will always have to increase his salary. They have created a situation where inflation goes through the roof.'
If that places in perspective Arsenal's claim that they tied Cesc Fábregas to a revised eight-season deal in 2006 (as five years is the Fifa-mandated maximum contract length, the agreement involved a non-binding 'option' to extend), the regulations for older players offer further grounds for concern. Individuals agreeing contracts after the age of 28 can terminate still earlier, at the end of their second season. As Wenger points out, the rule is unlikely to survive a legal challenge by a younger player seeking a second-season escape.
'In the past, you signed and you were there for life,' he says. 'Then you have seen Bosman coming in, then Webster. It looks like the balance goes always towards the player. And if you go to appeal, there is no protection any more. At the moment, after 28 you need only two years. I see the next thing coming is people saying, "Why is it 28 and not 27? That's age discrimination. Why do we have to wait two years after 28 and three years before?"
'If it goes down to two as well, you go from one extreme to the other. It could mean the disappearance of transfer fees.'
Arsenal are already suffering. This season past, Mathieu Flamini ran down his contract before accepting the richest deal offered to join AC Milan. Alexander Hleb's future is unsure after he threatened to terminate without just cause. And Emmanuel Adebayor's future will be determined by the club's response to Milan's offer to multiply his salary. On Friday Adebayor said: 'I am footballer, I have a three-year contract at Arsenal but as you know, a lot of clubs are interested in me. Arsène Wenger is like a father to me... but if he sells me for 50m, everyone is getting the benefits.'
If that should amuse the Italian, Spanish and French clubs who have suffered as Arsenal have diligently exploited the other end of transfer regulations to relocate their academy elite to north London, there is further encouragement for them in Wenger's analysis of the Premier League's status in the world game. An English club is yet to employ a World Footballer of the Year, never mind one in his prime. Just as Ronaldinho appears a probable capture, this year's champion-in-waiting is plotting his departure.
'You would want Ronaldo to stay and Kaká to come to England,' Wenger says. 'It looks for me that the financial dominance of England in the last three or four years has been rebalanced. Italy was knocked down and has recovered. Spain has moved up. Financially it will be more difficult to dominate as we have done in the last few years. Football dominance is linked with economic dominance. You have to give more money to the player who has played in Italy or he doesn't move.
'I don't want Ronaldo to leave, not at all. I'm for stability.'
Unfortunately, in the era of the 100m footballer, what clubs say no longer necessarily goes.
