European Football Clubs Fail To Comply With FIFA Compensation Rule, Report Claims

A report commissioned by the European Club Association revealed that European football clubs "are failing to pay as much as they should to compensate other teams for training players," according to Alex Duff of BLOOMBERG. The report said that as little as 1.5% of $5.1B in transfer fees "the last two seasons was paid out in so-called solidarity payments." FIFA requires buying clubs to pay 5% of transfer fees to the teams "that trained players between the ages of 12 and 23." The report said that there was a shortfall of $199M "in the last two seasons." Raffaele Poli, a researcher at the Int'l Center for Sports Studies in Neuchatel, Switzerland, said that clubs in South America and Africa "often fail to chase payments" they were not aware they were owed or which they did not have the resources to pursue (BLOOMBERG, 3/4).