What does France want: to be a great football nation or a fairer nation?
AP, Mar 7, 2012
All presidential campaigns are bound to have moments of populist enthusiasm, but each is marked by a certain local twist. The French presidential election, unlike those of the Americans, is being characterised less in the promises on what taxes shall be slashed than in what will be imposed. The more you promise to tax, the more popular are.
Francois Hollande and his socialists have gunned for a top marginal tax rate of 75 percent on those with incomes in excess of 1 million euros, a suggestion that has bumped them up the polls. An Ifop poll in March came in with figures of 61 percent in favour of the proposition.
The incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy, who was the happy slasher of taxes, has changed his tune, countering with his own tax platform, seeing to target the global revenue of French companies and chase up ‘fiscal exiles’ (Bloomberg, Mar 15). This is a problematic proposition that may run foul of the European Court of Justice, but times are tough for Sarko.
So who has rebuked the tax fans and polls favouring this drive? France’s football fraternity, for one. The idea that one might be taxed three quarters of each euro expended for incomes above 1 million is seen as a dangerous move by one of the better paid groups in France. French League president Frederic Thiriez sees doom and gloom, an apocalyptic exodus from the French game that will make it plummet in standards and reputation.
The language of the football, anti-tax brigade is dramatic, hyperbolic, and outrageously grim. ‘It would be the death of French football’, Thiriez told L’Equipe, propelling France into the lowest tiers of football status – the likes of Slovenia no less. Beware the football wasteland that is bound to engulf France should these laws be passed.
The Associated Press ran a hypothetical scenario. ‘Like warzone refugees, the best and therefore the richest footballers in France fled as fast as their sports cars would carry them, pockets stuffed with cash from hurriedly emptied bank accounts and trailing agents and tax lawyers gleefully rubbing their hands’ (Mar 7).
Michel Seydoux, president of Lille, the current French champion, preferred to see football as a necessary release for a desperate and unhappy public, an expensive but necessary diet of bread and circuses. Give them the spectacle, and they will be happy that their gladiators are paid millions without paying higher taxes.
Not so, claim such foot ball supporters as Timothee Lenoir, a fan of the Qatari owned Paris Saint-Germain. ‘It’s really sad if footballers cannot understand that, in a crisis, you have to tax those who earn the most money. That’s the way it is. Other European countries should do the same thing’ (AP, Mar 7). If there is a risk of player flight, so be it. Those who love the club will stay.
Brilliant players will be attracted to brilliant leagues. The response to that is that a brilliant league is only possible if you have the sweeteners to begin with. The players in this are regarded as subsidiary to the salary package that is in place to bring them in to begin with.
They are pure instruments of the selfish principle, irresponsible citizens who are indifferent to the amount to be forked out to the state whose league they play for. Such a characterisation by the masters of French football is certainly a harsh one – it suggests that footballers are sporting brats.
Brilliance is not all a matter of the cash, but what the Hollande-French football spat realises more than ever is that the wars on salaries in international football have less to do with its principle than with its payment.
The spoiled of international football are now ranting. If they leave a country because of policies that claim to make it a fairer one, the loss, in its broader social context, will be worth it. Besides, most of them will probably hire tax lawyers and move their assets to a more attractive haven.
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