2024-01-16 14:05:40
The professional players’ union filed a complaint against X this Tuesday, January 16 against this club practice which aims to sideline a player to push him to extend his contract or accept a transfer.
Kylian Mbappé placed in a loft: immediate story, big news from the sports press. The banning of the striker by Paris-Saint-Germain lasted two months this summer, in a context of renewal, or not, of his contract linking him with the capital club. Not all players benefit from the same sounding board as the Frenchman, and from his strike force (marketing, decision-making, etc.). So here is the National Union of Professional Footballers (UNFP), the main union of French players, which is filing a complaint against ‘away some players in these “lofts”.
What are these “lofts”?
During the transfer period, some clubs place the players they want to part with in a so-called “loft” reserve, a sort of storage space adapted to the grass: no more training with the professional group, no more travel or matches… The club “prevents” the player from carrying out “his professional activity under normal conditions”, and this player can therefore no longer “consider executing his contract until its end”, summarizes the complaint. The footballer who wants to return to the competition will therefore leave the club or, conversely, extend his contract.
What is the complaint about?
The UNFP believes that these clubs impose “brutal isolation and multiple pressures” on players to push them to extend their contract or, on the contrary, to accept a transfer – a way of separating from them while ensuring that they receive benefits. compensation.
They constitute “criminal offenses”, estimate the UNFP lawyers, Julia Minkowski and Léon del Forno, in a press release. Exercising “moral constraint” to get a person “to agree to sign a contract or terminate it constitutes the offense of extortion,” they detailed. “The repeated actions of an employer” which result in a “deterioration of working conditions likely to infringe the rights of the employee or compromise his professional future” constitute harassment.
The union accuses the international federation in particular of participating in this “extortion” by imposing “a framework” which places the employing club “in a dominant position”. A player is linked to his club by a fixed-term contract. If he is transferred before its end, the club receives termination compensation from the player’s new club, which is not the case if the player has completed his contract before changing.
Are there many cases?
Yes, believes the UNFP. These practices are even “very widespread”. And the UNFP supports its complaint with a list of around fifty players placed in loft but who were not associated with the preparation of this complaint.
Among them, Kylian Mbappé at Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), therefore, the world champion not having played a single match with his club from June 19 to August 19, 2023. “Rare”, however, are the players who attacked their clubs for fear of “retaliation”, deplores the union. Among these exceptions is former international goalkeeper Stéphane Ruffier. Coincidence of the calendar: the latter obtained on Monday the conviction of AS Saint-Etienne, who must pay him 850,000 euros in compensation.
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