Unemployment In the Industry

Now that Houllier and Queiroz have been shown the door by their clubs, they will be joining hundreds if not thousands of footballers that find themselves unemployed. Houllier and Queiroz are the lucky ones in terms of what they were getting paid and what kind of payoffs they likely received for leaving their respective clubs. For the most part, the footballers that they join never saw the salaries they had and definitely didn’t receive any cushy payoffs to leave. The industry is going through a period of contraction. For most industries, contraction means a loss of jobs and companies. But soccer is a bit different; clubs don’t just disappear. The area where we see the contraction is in clubs squad size, going with younger players, renegotiating existing contracts and trimming their back office staff. Leeds recently laid off hundreds from their office staff. One of the fallacies about the fall of Leeds was the money they spent on transfers. Since 1996, Leeds has only spent £18 more on buying players than what they got for selling them. That breaks down to a few million pounds a year, nothing that would break a club’s back. Last year, Leeds lost £49.5 million. And who did they buy last year? Unless it was Pele’s genetic clone, they lost that money on player wages and other things. And if you want to say, “ya, of course those wages are killing them” then explain how they continue to function as a club despite laying of a couple hundred folks from their office. Player wages have been a problem at Leeds just as any other club. The difference was the folks running the club did a horrible job. They may have known what they were doing, but they didn’t act like it. And now the fans at Leeds have to pay the price.