Javier Tebas, president of LaLiga and Luis Gil, director of LaLiga competitions, met electronically on Tuesday afternoon with David Aganzo, president of the Association of Spanish Soccer Players, and the general secretary of the union, Diego Rivas, to analyze the measures to be adopted in Spanish football in the face of the coronavirus crisis and how they could affect football players. The appointment, by videoconference, comes a day after the employers met with the Federation within the Monitoring Committee to which, curiously, AFE belongs but in which this time it did not participate to decide the suspension of all national competitions' sine die '.
The face-to-face, as AS has been able to know, has been very constructive and has been focused on publicizing the plans of the clubs, especially in relation to the request of the ERTE and the proposal for a salary drop in the professional templates, as well as exposing what is the approach of footballers to this situation in which they have been placed as the most urgent solution to mitigate the effects of the crisis. AFE, which in the morning issued a statement denouncing irregularities, asked LaLiga that this be closely monitored in professional football and transmitted that it will not be easy for the clubs to convince the labor authority that the State is going to take over 70% of the salaries of the soccer players because the activity has not stopped. Thebes, for his part, explained the reasons why that the employers announced yesterday that they will support and coordinate the ERTE requests. Even so, it transmitted that, as reported by AS, most prefer to explore other avenues rather than avail themselves of this right. AFE, with the data they have in hand right now, that the ERTE will not reach, in the worst case, more than 25% of the clubs. He hopes that he will not reach even the ten of the 42 professional clubs that compete in First and Second.
Aganzo was the one who asked the Ministry of Culture and Sports, the CSD, the RFEF and LaLiga a few days ago to open a direct communication channel in order to keep all Spanish players promptly informed of the steps taken. LaLiga has picked up the glove thrown by the union and has in fact already proposed another new meeting for this week. However, in these conversations he has not cited (nor explained why) the other active union of footballers, Footballers ON, despite the fact that it has around 5% of the representation of the players in professional football and although it has been an actor that it has previously counted on to negotiate, among other things, the women's collective agreement and other issues regarding improvements of athletes.