Winter was in full swing, and a monument of French sport was in peril. In February 2010, in suspension of payments, AS Saint-Etienne feared the collapse. “We were in danger”, remembers the co-president of the Forézien club, Bernard Caïazzo. To limit financial risks, the Greens then set a cap on the salaries of their players – the main expense of any professional club – indexing part of their income to the results of the team.
Almost seven years later, this salary cap was unraveled, but the device allowed Saint-Etienne to drastically clean up its accounts. “We are the only Ligue 1 club to produce, for ten consecutive years, last year included, a balanced financial result”, welcomes the Saint-Etienne president.
Eleven years have passed. Today, all of French football faces the precipice. “Between the consequences of Covid-19 and Mediapro, there will be a cash flow crisis, which, in an almost mechanical way, will have repercussions on the payroll”, notes Luc Arrondel, research director at the CNRS and co-author of Football Money (with Richard Duhautois, Cepremap, 2018).
One principle, three solutions
According to the latest annual report from the national management control department (DNCG), the total payroll for players from the twenty Ligue 1 clubs amounted to 1.58 billion euros during the 2018-2019 season, for revenue amounting to 2.1 billion euros excluding transfers. Clubs are forced to tighten their belts, and are thinking of solutions to make them less vulnerable. As, for example, the structural limitation of wages, by imposing a salary cap, as proposed, from April 2020, Bernard Joannin, president of the Amiens SC club.
” The salary cap aims to regulate wages, but there are different ways of thinking about itr, explains Luc Arrondel. You can set a maximum amount of wages, for example 50,000 euros per month. The idea here will be to reduce inequalities between players. ” A reform that would have the effect of reducing remuneration “Partly worthy of another planet”, as the President of the German Football Federation, Fritz Keller, thundered in May 2020, calling on the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), the body that rules football in Europe, to address the issue of this “salary cap”.
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