The spectacular contract clause that stops footballers being punished

You wouldn’t get paid if you refused to show up at work.  

And if you refused more than once, the awkward lady from HR would invite you to a meeting and say something along the lines of:

 “We really like you kid, but you messed up, so we have to let you go.”

Yet, if a professional footballer doesn’t turn up to training, they still get their hundreds of thousands. Remember when Ross McCormack’s electric gates stopped him from attending Aston Villa training…

 … Not fair, right?

 We thought so too.

So, we asked top lawyers why this was the case.

The short answer to why players get paid even if they’re naughty:

Footballers’ employment contracts are different to mine and yours. Very different.

Players are entitled to full pay when they’re disputing with their club (employer), whilst we mere mortals are not.

The long answer:

Starting from the top, what happens when a footballer does something wrong?

They throw a party before a big game.

They get subbed and give the manager the finger.

Or, they publicly say, “My teammates are s**t” and “I want to play for the top of the league, not this bunch”. 

Well, clubs often deal with disciplinary situations swiftly and have standard punishments at their disposal.

 “Footballers have clauses in their contracts to deal with player breaches and invite the player to a disciplinary hearing so that the club can seek to deal with them on a proportional basis,” said Warren Heyman Head of Sports Law at Blackstone Solicitors.        

Heyman adds: “There is a wide scope of disciplinary penalties that a club can enforce but, depending on the severity, a first offence usually results in the docking of up to two weeks.”

OK. Simple enough.

When a player accepts wrongdoing, they get a slap on the wrist. Most likely two-week wages. Everyone moves on. Case closed.

But what if a player doesn’t accept that they’ve done anything wrong?

The player appeals his club’s punishment.

Then, boom, media uproar ensues: the player is likely made to train alone, be ousted from the first team, and they’ll likely share a few encrypted social media posts…

… but that’s the least of the club’s worries.

Whilst the player is appealing the disciplinary action, they’re entitled to receive full pay.

Yes, you read that right.

“During any appeal period, the sanction will be suspended until the appeal is determined and the player will continue to be paid during this time,” Christine Caffrey, Employment and data protection Solicitor at SA Law, told Route One.

Here lies the difference between ordinary contracts and footballer contracts as you and I don’t benefit from the same luxury.

 “This is quite different to a typical employment scenario whereby a sanction will apply from the point of the decision and therefore if you are dismissed you will not be paid during an appeal process,” Caffrey added.  

This means footballers under contract have incredible bargaining power. They can delay any punishment by simply appealing the club’s punishment until it reaches the Premier League Appeals Committee (which is a long and costly process for everyone involved).

How about if there’s still no resolution?

Some disputes leave the player-club relationship broken beyond repair In that case, clubs loan players out.

Loans are amazing for clubs as they keep the player as an asset, ready to be sold when the opportunity arises.

Termination is a last resort…

“Termination is the last step to take because the club is walking away from an asset worth x million pounds. Not only that, but the club is potentially allowing a rival to take that asset for free to its further sporting detriment,” Heyman confirms.

So, when’s it worth getting rid of a player?

Termination is only sensible when a player is worth nothing to the club – both on and off the pitch.

Former Arsenal forward Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is a great example:

Despite being the club captain in 2021…

• Bad behaviour off the field meant his manager wanted him as far away from the squad as possible…

• … and Arsenal felt his £350,000 a week wages up to the next transfer window (20 weeks x his wages = £7 million) outstripped the amount they could sell him on the transfer market (he only had one year left on his contract).

Arsenal decided to cut their losses and pay the striker £7 million to leave the club and never come back.

If Arsenal chose to keep Aubameyang, they would have risked paying him £25.9 million for the 74 weeks he had left on his contract whilst in dispute with him…

In light of this, paying Aubameyang £7 million to leave the club seems like a great deal now, doesn’t it? 

Wrapping it up

When a club wants to discipline a player, they face a catch-22…

On one hand, they want to discipline players who are behaving badly. Yet, on the other, players have a unique hold on their employers that other employees do not; they can ultimately delay the club from docking their wages for a long time.

On top of this, players are hugely important assets to a club.

In Heyman’s words, “clubs have to consider the commercial, legal, and moral consequences of how to deal with a player’s off-field misdemeanours” which makes any decision to penalise a player extremely difficult.

If players remain entitled to full pay whilst disputing with their clubs and players continue to be worth more money, they will continue to push traditional employer/employee boundaries.