FIFA President Sepp Blatter recently claimed that Manchester United should let Cristiano Ronaldo leave, and essentially blamed the European Champions for treating the Portuguese star like a slave.
“I'm always in favor to protect the player and if the player wants to leave, let him leave,” said Blatter. “In football, there's too much modern slavery, in transferring players or buying players here and there and putting them somewhere. We are trying now to intervene in such cases.”
His so-called intervention was nothing more than a wayward comment to the press about “modern slavery.” Basically the head of FIFA thinks of millionaire footballers as slaves. According to Blatter, despite the exorbitant wages players are paid and the contract commitments they’ve made, they should be able to discard their allegiance to the club, no matter what the length of the contract may be.
That’s not how it should work. If a player wants to leave, he shouldn’t sign a five-year contract committing much more than just his immediate future to his club. If a player signs that long of a contract he needs to be prepared to fully honor it, unless of course, the club wishes to sell him.
So let’s just pretend Blatter is right and that Manchester United is guilty of modern slavery. Then what about all of the players who have gone unpaid for months now at Levante? How can Blatter even mention the world “slavery” when all this is going on in Spain?
Levante players were forced to take summer jobs during the off-season this year due to the club’s failure to pay them their wages. The Spanish club was relegated from the Spanish Primera last season and owes around €18 million to their staff!
Players are reported to have even gone months without pay, causing them to threaten to boycott their final game of the season against Real Madrid. The players have only received 20 percent of their payments for the past two seasons.
Levante’s psychologist, Jose Carrascosa, even warned the club officials that some of the players may experience anxiety and depression as a result of being relegated and not receiving their wages yet.
"There are people experiencing sleeping problems, with anxiety, while others have lost weight through the ordeal," Jose Carrascosa said to a Marca newspaper. "This includes players that have had to resort to working through the vacation to be able to live."
Maybe it’s just me, but personally I think if a player’s club agrees to pay him a certain amount of money every week or month, then the player can expect to get his money. And if the club doesn’t meet the agreements of the contract, then the player should have a choice to leave.
After all, the club breached the contract and should not be able to expect the player to honor the contract, when they themselves did not even honor it.
Manchester United honored Ronaldo’s contract and therefore can expect him to do the same. Levante failed to honor the contracts of their players and should by no means be able to expect their players to respect the contract any longer.
So if there’s any time the word “slavery” should be thrown around it’s in the crisis currently ongoing in Spain. I’m appalled that FIFA haven’t even looked into the situation yet. But then again I guess they are too busy worrying about the situation in Manchester involving potential Ballon D'Or winner Cristiano Ronaldo.
Is it just me, or is something wrong with this whole picture?
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