Football operates in many ways that would never be tolerated or even contemplated in any other business. In what other industry, for example, does an employee get paid an absurd figure of £100,000 a week or more whether he worked that particular week or not?
Some of the excesses of the sport are down to both the English FA and the Premier League itself. But some of the mysterious and very negative aspects of the professional game come from one place and one place only: FIFA. In this instance, I’m not talking about FIFA’s failure to implement video technology and choosing to remain in the 18th century.Examine the following. We - as in the Icelandic-owned West Ham - paid way over the odds for the services of Alessandro Diamanti. With the predictable result that we had to sell him for a pittance. Which would have been bad enough. But then comes the small detail that Brescia have still not paid us a penny for Diamanti. And from a legal point of view, there is not a damn thing that we can do about it.
In any other business ,you could take someone to court, or sue, to recover damages from non-payment or breach of contract. Not in football. Why? Because if we dare take Brescia to court, FIFA will hit us with sanctions for breaching their idiotic rules that prevent one team from taking legal action against another. Funny how such rules did not seem to apply to Sheffield United.
This is just absolute stupidity of the highest order. If a club cannot sue to recover what is rightfully owed, then what is the incentive for buying clubs to ever honour an agreement? It makes an absolute mockery of the transfer system. Football clubs, like any other corporation or individual, should have full right of redress through the courts if another club has failed to honor the terms of a transfer deal. It is naïve in the extreme for FIFA to rely on the 'goodwill' of clubs to honor financial agreements between one another.
As in any other industry, a certain number of bottom of the barrel filth exist who will lie, steal and cheat in a desperate attempt to avoid paying their bills. This has got to stop. Brescia - and for that matter, FIFA - need to be made an example of. FIFA should not be able to get away with conducting itself like a Stalinist dictatorship.
Understandably, our owners have grown increasingly frustrated with the intransigence of Brescia and the indifference of FIFA. As a result they have chosen not to pay the Danish club that we bought Winston Reid from until Brescia pay us for Diamanti.
Whilst the irritation of our owners is totally reasonable, there is a real reputational risk in West Ham choosing to delay payment to another European club over Brescia’s actions. It could make it very difficult for us to operate in the transfer market on the continent in the future. Having said that, the moment that Brescia does finally pay up what it owes us for Diamanti, it is very likely that West Ham will then immediately make payment to Reid’s former Danish club.
But we should not have been put into this position in the first place. This is just another example of poor governance or, more accurately, a total lack of governance by FIFA. Serious questions have to be asked about how much the English game benefits from its association with FIFA, because it is looking like a very one-sided relationship.
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