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Well the billionaire babies of Serie A have decided to go on strike after the 30th November unless their demands for a new collective contract are met. Now I don’t intend to get into the details of the contract they are requesting or the one they are being offered, but it seems absurd that men who make $20,000 plus a week would ever go on strike for the right to refuse to be transfered.
Now call me cold, but I just don’t see where the sympathy for the potential strikers or the league is going come from. I understand supporters love their clubs, and want to watch them play, but more than that they want the clubs to succeed and endure. A strike by these players would remove the funding for the clubs from the lucrative Champions League, television, and other dependent revenue sources. One of the main casualties will be Juventus jersey sales as the club are languishing in sixth, and don’t have the same level of backing as you’d find behind clubs like AC Milan. In the end, this loss of revenue won’t hurt the players as they will still be able to command the same price following a resumption of work. The question is, how will the financially weakened clubs manage to pay them their wages. The obvious answer is through taking on more debt, and perhaps a long slide down a slippery slope to the junkyard populated by the Sheffield Wednesday’s of the world.
For the sake of the league, I hope this insanity is over soon.
Written by: Matthew Wall, editor, soccerprose.com
