AS Monaco Pulls Off a Temporary Deal With its Players for a Pay Cut

Who would want to manage a soccer team in these circumstances – even the otherwise glamorous job at AS Monaco. 

Financial Guillotine 

Just imagine the challenges you have to juggle. First and foremost you have the biggest payroll in the League next to PSG and your revenue sources are drying up – hopefully just temporarily, of course. Since Coronavirus brought the season to a halt mid-March, absent are cash inflows from TV rights, ticketing, and marketing. That calls for a reduction, some would say a drastic reduction in lifestyle.

Negotiations between management and the players are tough – notoriously so. Only Rennes so far has managed to get its players to take less during the crisis. 

Do the stars take the brunt of the hit to their pay? A proposal from the National Union of Professional Footballers makes common sense: The biggest salaries are to be cut more than the small ones – up to 50% drop for wages above 100,000 euros monthly, for example. 

It’s a Deal 

But the agreement has had to receive the approval of each player individually. And the players reportedly first resisted on the grounds, according to them, alleging that management had created much of the problem by, among other things, overpaying for transfers. After tense negotiations, the Monegasque players and the management have finally arrived at the point where an agreed deal is on the table. 

This agreement covers only the month of April but it should allow a temporary delay of part of the salaries – though the players have a chance to recover the lost money later. 

Transfer Window

This so-called glamorous job as manager. No sooner that you manage to push the immediate financial crisis over the horizon you now have to trade players in the transfer season – and keep the right ones like Wissam Ben Yedder Top scorer in Ligue 1 with 18 goals. The striker has more than given a return on the investment of 40 million euros made last summer but he will be in great demand. Yes, he could be traded for “big bucks” but then you have to replace him.

There is potential to cash in on transfers of defenders where seven players are jostling for two positions – four of them around the ripe young age of 20. The seven are Glik, Maripan, Jemerson and Badiashile plus Marcelin, Pavlovic and Panzo, the last three back from loan. 

So as manager of this costly huge group of 70 players, would you be able to slim it down and build for the future at the same time. What would you do with Cesc Fabregas, 33 and the club’s biggest salary, pulled in by Thierry Henry. 

More than a Quarter of the Players out on Loan 

And 22 of the players are out on loan. This may work in normal times when Monaco could have used the loaned players to help out with its finances but these are certainly not normal times in European football.

Ninth in Ligue 1 and no European Cup play 

Don’t envy Robert Moreno. Just when you need the extra costly talent you are faced with a financial crunch. Ninth in Ligue 1 when the championship ended, Monaco will not compete in the European Cup next season for the second year in a row. Virtually 200 million euros invested in the last two mercatos without a podium.