Received from: PFA
Congress supports the work being undertaken by the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) to ensure that any changes to financial regulations within the game are properly negotiated with players and their union.
Congress welcomes the PFA’s engagement with the implementation of financial regulations within football, and its active role in ensuring a financially sustainable professional game.
However, Congress notes that, as part of proposals for financial reform, arbitrary restrictions on player wages continue to be proposed by clubs – the employers – without adequate consultation or negotiation with players – the employees.
The reality for the average professional footballer is that their career will be short and extremely insecure. Most players will spend their career on short-term contracts where their earning window is limited, and where they are one serious injury away from leaving the professional game.
Most players will not choose the timing of their exit and will need to begin a new, alternative career in their twenties or thirties, despite often being within a football environment since childhood. Congress welcomes the continued work by the PFA to protect the rights and conditions of members and to prepare them for life after football through new initiatives such as the PFA Business School.
Congress supports the PFA’s work to ensure that artificial player wage controls are not promoted by clubs and leagues as a ‘quick fix’ to perceived financial sustainability issues in football, and that any proposed financial reforms within the game which will impact PFA members are properly evidenced, considered and negotiated.
Professional Footballers’ Association