Coronavirus has worsened poor financial state of KPL players
What you need to know:
- Here it is brutal since we are very sure clubs are not paying salaries and blaming it on the coronavirus! We know it because we talk to the players.
- This is a call of distress to all those concerned: pay the players now even if the virus be thy refuge.
There is an ancient Chinese curse that simply says: ‘may you live in interesting times”. Well, the interesting times are here.
There are people deluded enough to think this curse is a blessing but they are really wrong.
Interesting times are those where nothing seems to work; there is too much fear and anxiety; what we may do as humans to change the tide seems useless and uncertainty clouds our future plans and scuttles them.
Nobody thought of the Covid-19 onslaught on the planet. We were looking for the completion of football leagues all over the world but now we are staring at a desert of unhappiness and unrequited love.
The Olympics have been shelved until next year if the situation changes. There are many that think if only the curfew was imposed when there is football and other sports to be watched it would have been somehow bearable.
Well, if there was football, we wouldn’t have minded even a complete shutdown but that’s not the case; it is killing the souls of men out there and we really sympathise with those comrades suffering at present.
There are leagues — and the Belgian one comes to mind — that have finished the season without playing all the matches!
They have already crowned the league leaders and named the teams to be relegated.
Soon there shall be an avalanche of other followers that will borrow the same leaf even though the conditions of their league are totally different from those of Belgium.
The players all over Europe are soon going to be forced to take a 30 per cent pay cut and the negotiations are going on.
In England, there is a possibility that the remaining Premier League matches will be played behind closed doors thus removing the fans from the stands.
This means that the broadcasters will not be there and as such revenue will not come from the match attendance or from sponsors and advertisers whose merchandise will not be on display.
They have not yet decided whether to go the Belgian way or not bearing in mind that if they do, the EPL will have to forfeit some £800 million to the aggrieved parties.
Liverpool may be crowned champs and many will not complain, but the battle will be upon those that wish to qualify for Champions League next season and the other batch wishing to join Europa League. These leagues too have not ended this season.
Who then will be relegated and by what formula? Any method used shall be very unfair.
It is on the same note that we turn to our own country where the league remains suspended. There are calls already to crown K’Ogalo the champions for this season. That will be a waste and very narrow thought. Our players in Kenya cannot take a 30 per cent pay cut since they are lowly paid and many have not seen a payslip in months.
Here it is brutal since we are very sure clubs are not paying salaries and blaming it on the coronavirus! We know it because we talk to the players.
This is a call of distress to all those concerned: pay the players now even if the virus be thy refuge.
