Outside La Liga's Heavyweights, Spanish Football Still Blighted by Unpaid Wages

Barcelona and Real Madrid's players walked out onto the turf at the Camp Nou on March 22. Underneath the lights, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo were just a few feet apart. So were Luis Suarez and Karim Benzema. The same for Neymar and Gareth Bale.

Surrounding them were only more glittering names: Andres Iniesta, Luka Modric, Xavi, Sergio Busquets, Toni Kroos, Iker Casillas and, well, it goes on and on.

On one pitch in Catalonia was the who's who of football. 

The two teams had converged on the Camp Nou for a clash that was being viewed as a title decider. Just a point separated Spain's two behemoths. Marca's buildup had spanned 32 pages. 

And as the teams strode onto the pitch, they were greeted by a wall of colour, a sight you couldn't take your eyes off, in the form of a spectacularly stunning mosaic.

For many, it will be the most vivid image of La Liga's season. 

David Ramos/Getty Images

Just seven days later, however, we were presented with a footballing scene of staggering contrast. Several hundred miles south, the Estadio Cartagonova witnessed something very different from the sight at the Camp Nou. 

On one side of the halfway line before kick-off were Cartagena's players, standing in a line, arm-in-arm, facing the modest crowd in attendance. On the other, Lucena, their opponents, were on their knees with their arms behind their backs. 

It was a protest.

Inside one venue, two teams met with a shared plight; both sets of players hadn't been paid for several months.

Though not as vivid, the image in Cartagena is perhaps a more accurate reflection of the state of football in Spain than the one seen at the Camp Nou. 

Sadly, of course, this isn't an isolated occurrence. The issue of unpaid player wages has been evident all too often in Spanish football. 

In August 2011, La Liga's players went on strike, delaying the start of the 2011-12 season because of unpaid wages amounting to more than €50 million across the country's top two divisions. 

At the time, as noted by the Guardian's Sid Lowe, clubs such as Real Betis, Real Zaragoza and Racing Santander were all in administration—just three of the 22 clubs (out of a total of 42) that had suffered that fate in the handful of years prior. Deportivo La Coruna later followed suit. 

Little more than a year later, Malaga, despite an excellent year on the pitch, were handed a one-season ban by UEFA and were excluded from the 2013-14 Europa League due to "significant overdue payables."

Prior to that, it had emerged that former Manchester United striker Ruud van Nistelrooy and current Arsenal star Santi Cazorla were among a number of Malaga players who'd threatened the club with legal action over unpaid wages, and, as explained by Andy Brassell for BBC Sport, "the LFP (Liga de Futbol Profesional) had imposed a transfer ban in January after the club missed a payment to Osasuna for Spain full-back Nacho Monreal."

Denis Doyle/Getty Images

Additionally, in early 2014, we saw a similar protest staged by Racing Santander's players to the one seen recently at the Estadio Cartagonova.

At El Sardinero, the home side stood arm-in-arm around the centre circle and refused to play their Copa del Rey quarter-final clash with Real Sociedad. Like those from Cartagena and Lucena, Racing's players hadn't been paid in several months. 

"We hope there are no legal consequences because we have done this for the good of football, for the good of a city and for the whole of Spain because there are lots of similar cases and we wanted to set an example," midfielder Javi Soria told Canal+ at the time, per the Guardian. 

Of course, the root cause of unpaid player wages in Spain is multifaceted. 

"Part of the reason is that there is no sporting penalty for economic mismanagement: administration becomes an opportunity rather than a problem for some club owners—the chance not to pay players, or other clubs for players they have purchased," wrote Lowe at the time of the 2011 strike. 

Another major factor is the vast inequalities that exist in TV revenue in Spain. Because of the absence of a centralised TV rights model, each club negotiates its own agreement with broadcasters—a process that resulted in a €122 million discrepancy in the revenue taken by the league's biggest draw-cards (Real Madrid and Barcelona at €140 million) and its lowest earners (Granada, Elche, Almeria, Valladolid and Rayo Vallecano at €18 million) in 2013-14. 

Naturally, the Premier League's recent announcement of its £5.1 billion TV rights deal across three seasons from 2016-17 (a 70 percent increase on the current arrangement) has only further highlighted—outside of the Primera Division's heavyweights—how far behind the Spanish game is. 

Such a situation, when considered against a backdrop of economic austerity, partly explains the figures released by Spain's Sports Council in 2014 that indicated Spanish clubs owe the country's government €670 million. 

It's no wonder players aren't being paid.

And as highlighted by John Shea for LawInSport, the presence of financially struggling players is only likely to contribute to Spain's documented and ongoing match-fixing saga. 

All of which indicates those stunning scenes at the Camp Nou for El Clasico are hardly representative of Spanish football. Instead, it's the image of protests at Cartagena that is.