Not so long ago, the contracts of professional football players were not so different from those of workers in any other sector. But that, like everything else that surrounds football, has changed. The way the game itself is understood and played has changed. The tools have changed, with technology as the main protagonist. The way of communicating what happens on and off the field has changed. The management of the areas that make up a football club has become more complicated, requiring ever greater specialization. And the management of clauses in footballers’ contracts could not be different.
Not so long ago, a player’s contract consisted of no more than four pages. Today, however, such a contract can be tremendously long. There are endless clauses in footballers’ contracts, which sometimes vary the player’s salary, others are payments to one or more representatives, and others may affect future contract extensions, among many other things.
It is not only the number of games played that counts, but also the number of minutes played or which club team the player plays for. It is taken into account whether the player has been a starter or not. If the team has won in the matches in which he has participated. If those matches are in domestic, continental, or intercontinental competition. They also take into account the number of goals, assists, penalties, fouls, yellow or red cards… All this, the variables of the result, the classification, or the consequences of specific actions.
These clauses in football players’ contracts also take into account much more subjective and not so statistical actions such as the image that each football player reflects and how this image affects the club’s own image. Weight, diet, daily discipline in training, behavior off the field, and even the attitude with the fans.
In addition to the variables that affect the retributions of the representatives, there are also those that affect the clubs of origin, which depend on an infinite number of factors.
And of course, all this affects the club’s planning. With this type of clause in the contracts of the football players, the complexity in the follow-up increases for the finance department as well as for the financial department and the sports management. For these departments it is important to visualize the exact situation of the club at all times and to build different scenarios that allow them to make the best decisions for each season, complying with the Financial Fair Play.
Not so long ago, this could be managed with a common spreadsheet for the entire club, where the usual clauses were noted and the situation of each player was known precisely at all times. But including all these variables and clauses in the contracts of the players, which in turn evolve with the result of each match, requires a team to carry out a manual follow-up that can last endless hours, and in which it is also easy to make mistakes.
Director11 Financial Manager
But thanks to technology, all this can change. Thanks to the fact that the amount of data that can be recorded in a football club management software is immense and access to it is easy and intuitive. Thanks to the construction of complex algorithms that make it possible to automate processes that are being validated manually. Technology allows improving efficiency by having updated information immediately, something that is key to the sports and financial planning of a club.
From director11 we have worked on the development of a system compatible with the sports management platform, which allows not only to record all the conditions of each contract but also to control all the variables automatically, obtaining information from the federative records and external platforms. In this way, we have managed to reduce the manual effort by 65%, and eliminate the risk of error by almost 85%.
Director11 Financial Manager allows us to perform financial simulations for the different teams of the club, designing different scenarios that help in budget forecasting.
In addition, the system makes it possible to track transferred players and receive notifications about their future transfers. This functionality is of great relevance because it directly affects the club through agreed variables, as well as through mechanisms contemplated in the FIFA statutes, Training Compensation, and the Solidarity Mechanism. The department will have a transfer monitoring control panel from which all information can be managed.
If one of the players reaches a certain number of minutes or games played, a certain number of goals, or any other variable that has been included in his contract, the new Director11 module will immediately validate it and send an alert to the indicated users.
And thanks to the Director11 Financial Manager dashboard, users will have all the information available in a very graphical way, at a glance, and with the possibility of generating reports.
The management of clauses in soccer players’ contracts will never be the same again. Do you want to know how our contract management module works? Do not hesitate and book a free demo with our team of experts who will help you to further digitize your soccer club.
