Reward for development? Tens of thousands of euros

Clubs that contributed to a player’s development are entitled to training compensation. Few of them, however, know about it.

Michal Janec, a product of Žilina football, was loaned in 2012 to second-league Liptovský Mikuláš. The 19-year-old defender spent nine months there, and in March 2013 Žilina sold him to the Czech team Slovan Liberec. That nine-month stint in the second league brought the team from under the Tatras an unexpected income of over ten thousand euros. “We had no idea we had such a right. The five-digit sum covered our monthly player salary costs,” Liptovský Mikuláš’s executive director Martin Pohlod told the Economic Daily. The club succeeded based on FIFA’s training compensation rules – meaning it had been involved in the player’s development until the age of 23. In the year-and-a-half dispute against Liberec, its claim was represented before the FIFA Dispute Resolution Chamber by the company Sports Law & Arbitration.

Compensations protect clubs
The International Football Federation (FIFA) introduced this compensation rule more than ten years ago. “The respected and comprehensive FIFA training compensation system arose as a response to the situation after the Bosman case, when players could leave clubs for free after their contracts ended. This way, clubs that develop young players have the right to a development fee, provided they meet the rules,” sports lawyer and football agent Jozef Tokos, who works with Sports Law & Arbitration to enforce such claims, told the Economic Daily. Compensation is due once a player signs his first professional contract and whenever he transfers internationally as a professional before turning 23. The amount a club is entitled to is set by FIFA’s tables – in Slovakia’s case, €30,000 per year (from ages 12 to 15, it is €10,000). “This winning dispute proved to us that investing in youth pays off, and in the future, we will follow our entitlements much more closely,” said Pohlod. According to him, few clubs, especially from lower leagues, know about this way to monetise their investment in young footballers. Through their ignorance, they deprive themselves of decent income, since a single year’s compensation can in many cases cover even half of a lower-league club’s annual budget. “Some teams do not get involved in such matters at all, and not even the possibility of unexpected income convinces them,” said Jozef Tokos. For clubs, it doesn’t have to cost a single extra euro. The agency representing clubs’ interests from as many as eight countries, including FC Porto and FC Parma, only receives payment in the event of a winning dispute.

A contract for youngsters is a risk
There are many cases where a lower-league club takes care of a young player, and at, say, 17 years old, he leaves for a leading Slovak club and signs his first professional contract there. In that case, the lower-league team is no longer entitled to international development compensation. Therefore, the safest way is to offer young talents a contract. But according to general director Dušan Tittel, it’s not that simple. “You are not convinced about every young player that they will become a professional footballer, so it would be risky to offer all of them professional contracts – it would increase costs,” Tittel says. He points out that no Slovak team is in the position of, say, Bayern Munich, which secures almost all its young players this way. For example, Slovan in the past received training compensation for striker Jakub Sylvestr when he transferred from Dinamo Zagreb to Germany’s Aue. “Some clubs pay these compensations automatically, elsewhere you have to claim them or even settle it in court. But most of the time, you have to chase these claims yourself,” Dušan Tittel added.