Several of England’s leading soccer clubs have slashed benefits for female players and are providing them with far less protection than their male counterparts, contracts signed by players and clubs show.
Last year, the Football Association (FA) made changes to the standard Women’s Super League contract that all players in the league must sign.
The amendments reduced sick or injury pay and allowed clubs to sack injured players who have been unable to play for as little as three months, compared with 18 months in the case of men in the English Premier League.
Chelsea player Maren Mjelde criticized the termination clause.
“It’s very disappointing. No players choose to be injured,” said Mjelde, who also plays for the women’s national team in Norway, where men and women representing the country receive the same compensation following an agreement last year.
The details emerging from the “Football Leaks” documents, which include e-mails and player contracts, come from a trove obtained by the German publication Der Spiegel and reviewed by Reuters in partnership with European Investigative Collaborations.
The Women’s Super League’s rules require all contracted players to be employed using the standard contract. Clubs can decide whether to enforce restrictive clauses in contracts, but cannot omit them.
“The Women’s Football Contract was designed and structured to meet the unique demands of the women’s football pyramid. It was developed in consultation between the FA, the clubs and the PFA [Professional Footballers’ Association] to shape a player contract that the women’s football pyramid could financially sustain,” an FA spokesperson said.
“It differs from men’s professional football, which is more established and better suited to accommodate the additional financial liability of long-term injuries to players,” the spokesperson added.
Matthew Buck, director of PFA player management, said his organization had recommended to the FA that it adopts the contract used for premiership male players, rather than reduce protections.
Until May last year, the women’s league contract said clubs would “during the period of incapacity pay to the player her basic wage.”
The contract set no time limit on how long a player could receive pay while incapacitated.
However, the new contract players have been asked to sign when renewing existing or agreeing new deals says that the clubs are only obliged to pay injured players their “basic wage for a maximum of six months from the date of the injury or illness.”
If a club does not want to have the option of bringing the player back to the team, the contract might also allow it to get out of paying the full six months injury pay.
That is thanks to a new “Termination for Long-term Injury” clause, which defines a “long-term injury” as one which, in the opinion of a medical professional, renders the player unable to train or play for three months.
If a doctor decides at the point of injury that the player would be out of action for three months, the club would be entitled to immediately give the player notice of the intent to terminate employment, said Eirik Monsen, lawyer for the Norwegian players’ union NISO.
If the player recovers during the three month’s notice period, she could return to work.
Previously, a club could only terminate the contract if a doctor determined the player had a “permanent incapacity,” dozens of signed contracts from between 2013 and last year showed.
Danish Players’ Union director Mads Oland said the difference between the men’s and women’s contracts showed “a clear imbalance.”
The standard contracts that clubs sign with their male players do not put a time cap on injury pay, although the contracts allow for injury pay to be reduced to half the player’s base salary after 18 months of injury, contracts showed.
Pay levels for premiership players are also far more generous.
The average salary for men in the Premier League was ￡2.64 million (US$3.39 million) a year, according to a survey conducted last year by Sporting Intelligence.
The average salary in the Women’s Super League was ￡26,752, the survey found.
Premier League players can be put on notice of termination due to long-term injury, but only after 18 months of incapacity, during which they are entitled to full pay.
If the male player recovers during the 18 months notice period, he can return to work. If the club wishes to sack the male player while he is incapacitated during the notice period, it can do so, but only by paying the player his full salary for the balance of the 18 months.
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