28 October 2010

Contract talks between the Italian football players' association and top professional league Serie A have
stalled. This again raises the possibility of a playing strike.

he two parties reached an agreement last month
to avoid a strike declared for September 24-25, but the players' association warned that if a new contract was
not settled by November 30 the strike would go ahead. "An agreement with Serie A is a long way off,"
players' union chief Sergio Campana said in a statement. "There has not been a single step forward since
September. Now we will talk with the players and decide together what to do. We need the football
federation's intervention." The strike threat in September was caused because of the union’s disagreement
with Serie A plans for a new collective contract which would force players to accept transfers or a place
outside the first team squad if they were no longer wanted by clubs . The September strike was called off in
part because the union generally lacked public sympathy given the vast sums of money top players earn
during a time of global economic hardship. "A players' strike would be unjustified and grotesque," Serie A
president Maurizio Beretta said. He called for Italian Football Federation president Giancarlo Abete to
intervene and order continuous talks, after negotiations broke down on Monday. However, AC Milan
defender Massimo Oddo, who read the original strike declaration on September 10, said the players are
open to "any sort of talks, but the league has erected a wall without any desire to negotiate.'' Oddo described
the league as acting like a "demagogue'' and "dictatorship.'' "We're open to an exchange but the other side
isn't. On every issue the league has its own ideas,'' Oddo said. "We're talking about workers' rights and
whether it's footballers or anybody else there are always rights.'' Beretta countered this view by saying the
players are being "overly presumptuous.” “ It's probably part of their negotiating tactics but I think we need to
restart talks in a different manner - not with two hours of discussions every 15 days but rather serious
nonstop negotiations,'' Beretta said. Oddo reiterated that the players are still unhappy with two items on the
new proposed collective contract - one clause that would prevent players from refusing transfers near the
end of their contracts and another regarding out-of-contract players being kept from preseason training. The
first opportunity for the strike to be carried out after November 30 is December 4 and 5, when Inter Milan is
scheduled to visit Lazio. While there have been numerous strike threats, the only time Serie A players
actually refused to take to the pitch came in March 1996 due to several issues, including the Bosman ruling,
which established the right of players to switch clubs freely once their contracts expired and found that the
strict limits on foreigners were illegal.

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