FIFA will pay $209 million to clubs releasing players for the 2018 World Cup in Russia and the same sum again for the 2022 tournament in Qatar, nearly three times the amount distributed in 2014.
FIFA Secretary General Jerome Valcke
A total of $70 million was distributed to clubs who released players for last year’s tournament in Brazil.
“We have an extension of the current agreement with the clubs for the period 2018 and 2022. And it is a very important thing for us to make sure that we can work in a very good way in a very good partnership with all the clubs around the world and party of the success of the World Cup,” FIFA Secretary General Jerome Valcke told reporters.
Valcke added that the deal wasn’t a bid to placate clubs over the dates for Qatar 2022.
“I will never use the word that it is in exchange of the release of the players because it is nothing to do with the release of the players, it is part of the FIFA statutes, the obligation to release players,” he said. “I will never use the fact or what I have already read, that it is compensation to the clubs based on the decision we have made on 2022, because again it is an extension of a current agreement we have had for the World Cups 2010 and 2014.”
The European Clubs Association (ECA), which represents more than 200 clubs, welcomed the agreement.
Ventuno/Reuters