In the Lunar New Year of 2022, the Chinese men's football team is too difficult; when the shame of losing to Vietnam is about to be forgotten, the women's football team has reached the top of the Asian Cup, resulting in the men's football team being pulled out again!
While our international footballers are feeling the ordeal, there have been a number of big news in Chinese football recently; for example, domestic players are likely to cut salaries again, and for example, the new season is expected to start as soon as April 23, the Northwest Gate of the Chinese League is likely to withdraw, and the salary arrears of 14 teams in the Chinese Super League last year were once again mentioned. And these news, which do not seem to be directly related, are actually related to the stock reform that is being promoted.
Salary cut control investment + league time is initially set to force the stock reform
In the past, at the end of the year and the beginning of the year, there will be notices on the official website of the Football Association requiring clubs to submit salary confirmation forms; but so far this year, the official website of the Football Association has not appeared in this notice, which means that, at least so far, the time for league access has not been determined.
Under normal circumstances, the Football Association needs to announce the admission list at least 20 days in advance and the schedule 10 days in advance; before that, the Football Association also has to review the materials submitted by all the clubs in the third professional league for one to two weeks, which means that according to the rhythm of the start of the game on April 23, the clubs must hand in the admission materials in mid-March at the latest. For clubs, the most critical part of submitting access materials is actually to solve the problem of wage arrears, or how to communicate with players, coaches and staff to solve the problem of wage arrears.
In the 2021 season of the Chinese Super League, only the salaries of the two clubs of SIPG and Taishan are paid on time; a few such as Henan and a few are delayed in the distribution of individual months, and the problem can also be well solved. However, most clubs, the problem of wage arrears is already more serious, and some clubs have not even settled their salaries and bonuses in 2020! Nowadays, most club investors are very difficult, and some companies themselves are already facing heavy debt pressure and have no intention of paying attention to the life and death of football clubs, so whether it is the Football Association or players or clubs, everyone has pinned their hopes on the stock reform.
But nowadays, in many articles analyzing the mainland economy, two hidden dangers will be mentioned; one is a real estate enterprise, and the other is an investment and financing platform such as urban investment, cultural tourism, and water investment in various places. The former is the original investor of many clubs, and the latter is the most likely to come in to take over the wave of stock reform. When the original holding club companies, and the companies that may come in to take over, are more difficult, many places can not take out too much spare money to support the football club, in order to make the club survive, it can only continue to compress investment! The easiest way to compress investment is to lay off employees and reduce wages!
As early as mid-January, after the Football Association held a meeting in Chengdu, it had been rumored that the salary cap of domestic players had been further reduced. Even if the Football Association is likely to push the salary cut for the third time in four consecutive years, it seems to once again put the so-called China Football Federation aside; but in the case that the salary cut has become the trend of the times, the purpose of the Football Association to push the salary cut is to promote the stock reform!
Don't want to change the OR? The debt problem is the biggest difficulty
The stock reform has become the premise for many clubs to start preparing for the new season, but in recent times, many clubs have released that it is more difficult to promote the stock reform, resulting in the signal that the pre-season preparation work cannot be carried out!
So why haven't the stock improvements of many clubs gone well? There is a question of will! The original words of the foot reform plan are: "Implement diversified investment by the government, enterprises and individuals, encourage the local government of the club to invest in the shares with resources such as football stadiums, form a reasonable investment source structure, promote the regionalization of the club, and encourage the qualified clubs to gradually realize the non-enterprise of the name." Improve the corporate governance structure of the club, accelerate the construction of a modern enterprise system, base on the long-term, systematic planning, and strive to build a century-old club. ”
From the perspective of keywords such as "encouragement", the share reform is not mandatory; so it was not until 5 years after the introduction of the plan that Luneng became the first club in Chinese football to be reformed by shares. Since it is not mandatory, there is a question of whether it is willing to change. Judging from the current situation, most places are not very positive about the share reform of the club; and in the clubs that have signed the share reform agreement, is Cangzhou and Henan better than before the share reform? Chongqing's stock reform can already be made into a "soap opera" with a long tug-of-war! Some places even clearly told the club's current investors that even if the share reform is completed, it will be difficult to have enterprises that come in to contribute.
Behind the doubts about the will, we should also see that the biggest difficulty of the stock reform is not the investment in the future, but the debt problem!
At present, the debts of various clubs can be roughly divided into the following categories: wage arrears (including bonuses, and social security provident funds), arrears of supplier payments (including canteens, accommodation, equipment, venue maintenance, etc.), and money owed to the parent company. Because when many investors inject capital into the club, they are done by way of loans. Once the parent company decides to give up football, these clubs who have come all the way from Golden Dollar Football will have a terrible debt on their books.
The money owed by the club to the parent company can theoretically be waived by the original investor. But in practice, it's far from simple. As for other arrears, from the perspective of the original investors of the club, they no longer want to play or can't play; if the club goes through bankruptcy liquidation procedures, the debts can be written off, will these companies that intend to exit still bear the debts? And most of the new companies or local parties themselves have no willingness to invest in football, which is equivalent to being forcibly pulled in, so how can they spend this unjust money?
The preparation of many clubs is at a standstill, who will guarantee the interests of the players?
There is no guidance document, there is no specific time point, coupled with the fact that the share reform involves a number of non-sports heavyweight departments, and the debt problem that all parties feel headaches, this is an important factor that causes the share reform of many clubs to be in the stage of continuous ridicule! The stock reform has not yet been determined, which means that who pays the club in the new season, how much budget can be approved must be put on a big question mark, and the key work such as reinforcements and coach selection of many clubs is still pending!
Under the combined effect of the post-Gold Dollar Era + the epidemic, many clubs have the need for financial restructuring; and the neutral name has invisibly pushed some companies that originally had the ability to continue to invest away from the professional league and become an important promoter of the stock reform. With the previous clubs in arrears will also be hidden, take the initiative to greet the media to let everyone not explode. But now many clubs are choosing to expose themselves on the issue of unpaid wages, to seek more attention, or even as a game tool. But does self-disclosure really solve the problem?
Previously, in the CCTV documentary, Wang Dalei said that in the national team, except for the players of Taishan and SIPG, the international footballers of other teams were discussing unpaid wages. And foreign aides who encounter unpaid wages can sue FIFA, fifa can punish the club for issuing a ban; domestic players are owed wages, even if the FOOTBALL Association makes a ruling, the club does not solve the problem within the specified time, what will be the impact? When you see that many clubs are still successfully playing in the 2021 season without solving the problem of salary arrears in the 2020 season, in fact, the FA's approach not only undermines the seriousness of the access regulations, but also indulges the behavior of salary arrears to a certain extent.
When clubs are saddled with heavy debt pressure, salary cuts are the trend of the times; but after the salary cuts, can the previous problem of wage arrears be solved? Before talking about unpaid wages, the outside world will habitually propose that Chinese players have earned more, which is the sequelae of Jinyuan football! But when some players with a monthly salary of 3,000 in the 2021 season, the team's salaries are divided into 3000, 6000, 9000 three-tier teams still suffer from long-term salary arrears; some Chinese B teams can't even pay the food fee in the division, and some players even have to borrow other teams' clothes to rub a bowl of ramen from other teams, which is still a problem of golden dollar football? Is this still the result of making more money? Who can get back the wages owed for the players? Who can protect the interests of the players?