2023-07-10 07:30:15
Barcelona Catalan football or Kings League? From this summer, the question will only have a binary answer. In the 2023-24 season, there will no longer be players combining 11 amateur soccer teams with clubs in the 7 soccer league chaired by Gerard Piqué. The reason? After half a year of improvised and forced coexistence, the two parties have understood that it is better to separate their ways. They are two formats that claim their difference: one, the purest football, which lives away from the elite by training anonymous footballers. The other, a media show promoted on the networks by influencers and where the least important thing is precisely the players. Two separate worlds that, yes, drink from the same raw material: the players. The battle for exclusivity begins.
The first step was taken, individually, by a few Catalan football clubs worried that a new competition could deprive them of talent. Several entities have decided to put an end to the legal loophole that allowed their players to participate in the Kings League. “Both in renewals and new signings we are including an anti-Kings League clause that includes a financial penalty. If they want to disassociate themselves from the club, they will have to pay to go and play there”, they explain to UE Sant Andreu, who last season confirmed promotion to the Second Federation. Europe also stipulates in the contracts that any sporting activity outside the club “must be agreed upon and approved”.
In the same category they will coincide with Terrassa FC, a club that had previously been shielded. “We didn’t need to incorporate any clause because our players are professionals and they already had a clause that prevents them from participating in other sporting activities with a risk of injury without the club’s authorization. If they asked us, we would not authorize them”, they comment.
The Kings League used some players from the fourth division of state football, but the great majority came from lower levels: from the National Youth League to the Tercera Federació, passing through the Primera Catalana. Mostly young players who play from the fifth division and below, levels far removed from professional football and where the contractual ties of the clubs are more flexible because they pay little or almost nothing to players who make a living from other professions. But the clubs are starting to move to protect themselves: “This summer we are incorporating a new article into the contracts of the subsidiary, of Segona Catalana [la UD Gornal]which prohibits any sporting practice that may alter the physical conditions of the players, rest time, injuries or workloads, except with the express authorization of the club”, explains the technical secretary of CE l’Hospitalet, Àlex Hermida.
This regulatory change will affect who is chosen as the first MVP split of the Kings League, Cristian Ubón, who in March terminated his contract with UE Sants to sign for Gornal after proclaiming himself champions of the Kings League with El Barrio at the Spotify Camp Nou. “We cannot offer him the success he deserves”, wrote the Barcelona entity, in a farewell text. At Sants, Ubón was paid 150 euros a month. the second split it will be decided on July 29 at Cívitas Metropolitano in Madrid.
But shielding the players contractually does not seem easy: “Even a player from the first team of Barça could say that he retires and go to the Kings League without paying, because it is not federated football”, warns Josep Sicart, sporting director of the FE Gram. “If they want to leave, and we will see cases during the season, they will leave. The clubs can only convince the players to stay,” he says. The Santa Coloma de Gramenet club is one of the few in the Third Federation that has all its players registered with Social Security: “If you don’t have them registered and you pay them black, what authority do you have to claim exclusivity from a player?” This club gives permission to the players to do other activities once the season is over, because it gives them leave from Social Security.
Half a hundred players will follow and others will enter the Kings League
To save themselves potential lawsuits, the Kings League has announced a move to offer players more incentives to opt for its proposal. On the one hand, a salary announcement that will come into force from September: the players will be paid between 2,500 and 7,500 euros per year depending on the round of draft (there will be five) in which they are chosen. “We are no longer talking about salaries per match, but per season”, announced Gerard Piqué. Considering that they calculate that each course will be equivalent to three splits (two leagues and a cup), some players could even see their salary tripled: from the 75 euros they paid per game in the 2022-23 edition to the 227 that a player who is chosen in the first round of the draft (KL itself calculates it taking into account 33 games per course). Of course: the players chosen in the fifth round of the draft they would continue to charge the same, 75 euros.
The long-awaited salary increase – the players even threatened to strike if it was not implemented – will be accompanied by another measure: the exclusivity that the Kings League will also demand from its players. In other words, those who want to play in the Piqué league will not be able to play 11-a-side football at the same time. It must be taken into account that of the more than one hundred players amateurs who have participated in one of the first two splits of the Kings League, more than half played in a football club 11. Entities such as Sants, Granollers, Santfeliuenc, Grama, Sant Cugat, Santboià and Muntanyesa also had a few players involved .
These and other clubs will have to wait until September to find out which footballers they can count on for the 2023-24 season, because on the 4th the second draft of the Kings League, which will renew half of the clubs’ squads: 50 new footballers will enter the place of 50 more who will be discarded by the clubs, who will have previously ‘renewed’ 50 more players. In other words, this summer the most modest Catalan football could see the Kings League withdraw from the market up to 100 footballers from various categories. The players, forced to choose.
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