By David Owen
September 28 – FIFA’s ruling Executive Committee has approved the renewal of the Club Protection Programme (CPP) – the scheme designed to remove a longstanding bone of contention by compensating clubs when players they employ are injured on international duty – for a further four years.
The programme, which was first approved at the 2012 FIFA Congress in Budapest, will now cover the full 2015-18 football cycle. The overall cost is estimated at €100 million. This time, women’s international ‘A’ matches will also be covered.
There is no indication as yet as to whether compensation terms for injured players will differ from the present scheme, which runs until 31 December 2014.
Under the original CPP, the temporary total disablement of a player hurt in an international match between 1 September 2012 and 31 December 2014 can trigger payments capped at €7.5 million per claim. The amount insured is the player’s annual fixed salary, with a maximum daily amount of €20,548 for a maximum period of 365 days.
FIFA has estimated the overall cost of this initial scheme, effective for less than two-and-a-half years, as opposed to the four years of the full international football cycle, at $100 million. The actual cost to FIFA in 2012 and 2013 was $54.4 million.
Analysis of the first 80 CPP cases, contained in FIFA’s 2013 financial report, showed that no less than 98% of the money paid out to that point had gone to clubs in Europe, where the vast majority of the best-paid players in the world play their club football.
Of the first €27 million in compensation, no less than €26.4 million went to European clubs, with €400,000 going to clubs in North and Central America, and €100,000 each to those in Africa and Asia.
Nothing at all had been paid at that point to clubs from Oceania or South America.
England alone was the destination of €10.4 million, or 38.5%, of the money, followed by Spain (€7.8 million) and Germany (€3.3 million).
The latest announcement means that next year’s women’s World Cup in Canada will be covered, though associated costs should be relatively small, given the comparatively low salaries earned by most women players.
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