South American footballers seek full pay amid coronavirus

SAO PAULO: Stars in some big Europe leagues are taking deep pay cuts amid the coronavirus pandemic but in South America, where most clubs and players aren’t nearly as wealthy, local footballers want to be shown the money. All of it.

In Brazil and Argentina, players aren’t budging, despite cuts to staffing and wage bills in other domestic leagues while the season is suspended.

In Brazil, negotiations between an association of clubs and the players’ union failed to reach any deal on pay and early vacations. Now team captains and executives are trying to reach individual decisions that legal analysts expect to end in the courts.

South America’s biggest country has registered more than 240 deaths related to COVID-19, and the Pacaembu stadium in Sao Paulo has been transformed into a hospital to handle mild cases expected for the next few weeks. There have been no professional matches in Brazil for two weeks.

The first pitch by Brazil’s top clubs was for a 25% pay cut for players until the end of the pandemic. Executives of the even the richest clubs fear the season shutdown will spook sponsors and debt levels will soar.

But players, including those who have been paid late in the past, haven’t given way and have asked for the oversight of the national soccer confederation. The union did give some ground in terms of early vacations. So far, the the Brazilian soccer confederation has not intervened.

Former players, executives and coaches said they were inspired by the example of Argentine great Lionel Messi, who took a 70% cut in his pay to help Barcelona keep its staffers during the pandemic in Spain. But the voices they are hearing in Brazil sound more like that of Atletico Mineiro’s Guilherme Arana. “I don’t think there is a reason (to cut). We are stopping because we need to,” the 22-year-old Arana told Fox Sports of the football shut down. He spent the first months of the year at Italy’s Atalanta, near the European coronavirus hotspot. “It is the world that is stopping.”