He flew into big football himself at the age of 16, when he was engaged by Sparta, spent money on stupid things, lived from day to day. Now former league defender Martin Klein is getting calls from young players asking him for advice on how not to end up broke at the end of his career. At the same time, he deals with real estate.
Does a player of an average Czech first league team have a chance to secure himself financially so that he does not have to do anything at least for a while?
Whenever one of the young people at the age of 17 asks me if he should go the professional football route, I tell him to think about it. Playing in an average major league team for years is certainly not going to set you up for life. But you can save some financial cushion so that you have time to look around after your career. On the other hand, you’ll miss out on a large part of the productive life when most people have already built some kind of career, while you’ll be starting from scratch.
It doesn’t sound very optimistic, but if a young footballer decides to try it, how should he proceed?
He should quickly realize that a career can end at any time. If he gets 50 thousand a month, he should be able to put ten of them aside and not touch them. If he can save ten out of 50, it’s already twenty out of a hundred, and so on.
Martin Klein
*2.7. 1984
– at the age of 16 he made his debut in the highest Czech league for Sparta, a year later he played in the Champions League with Letenský
– league champion with Sparta 2000/01 and domestic cup winner with Teplice 2008/09
– in addition to Sparta and Teplice, he played for Turkish Konyaspor, Hungarian Ferencvárosi TC or Kazakh FK Kajsar Kyzylorda
And what should they invest in?
Today, there are already a lot of less risky instruments in which to invest money in the long term and to somehow appreciate it. I try to advise the boys to aim at least towards the fact that they will have their own housing after the end of their careers. With the exception of a few clubs, Sparta, Slavia and let’s say Pilsen, our guys don’t have such dizzying salaries that they can afford to spend on stupid things and not think about the fact that the career is short and there will come a time when they have to decide what to do next.
But when a footballer is 16 or 17 years old like you, when you came to Sparta and played in the Champions League, it’s probably hard to be that aware, isn’t it?
Of course. A soccer player lives in his bubble, which is formed by the team he comes to and tries to fit into. I experienced it myself, I was a boy from a village near Brno who came to play in Sparta. Teammates had expensive cars, dressed nicely. And when someone like me comes in in quotes in a flannel, you might get laughed at. Someone gives it and doesn’t care, someone wants to fit in.
But then they have to borrow for all this comfort.
There are many pitfalls for a young lad. Unless he’s a kid from a family that gave him good financial literacy. A lot of people want to make a living from football players. They attract them to various investment opportunities, insurance and the like. Few footballers think they should save two paychecks to pay taxes or social security at the end of the year. It happened to me too. And it was one of the reasons why I went abroad. Here in the Czech Republic, I didn’t save anything, I lived from day to day and spent on bird stuff. It wasn’t until the end of my career that I understood that I should approach earnings differently.
So, are there any players in the Czech league who play football on loan?
They are 100% in the league and there won’t be a few of them. We know that some of them ended tragically. They are often affected by the pressure of the environment. They feel that when they play in the first league, they must have a luxury car, clothes, housing, and they only earn money to pay off their loans. But no one will admit this to you.
Shouldn’t clubs take care of the financial literacy of their clients, especially young guys?
The clubs throw it around like a hot potato, they say that the boys’ agents take care of the finances. In turn, the agents say that people from their agency are in charge of it, but there are still cases when it doesn’t work well. But that’s more for political discussion, there isn’t even any law on sports that would think about this.
How does it work abroad?
For example, in Holland it works so that when you sign a professional contract, a certain percentage is deducted from your salary to cover taxes and fees like any employee, and then savings. And from the age of 35, you have the option to have this money paid out all at once or gradually. There, they solved it systematically like this.
But we are talking about the lucky ones who get to the first league clubs, what if they try to break through among the elite from the lower competitions?
Little is known that footballers work as self-employed people in our country. They are not club employees. In this, we are unique in football Europe. Western countries, Austria or even Hungary, where I played, have it set up differently, you become an employee. I also played in Kazakhstan, where I was even a civil servant. In our country, employment relations for footballers do not offer many guarantees for the footballer.
What do you mean?
When you are an employee, you have many more rights under the Labor Code. The employer pays social and medical benefits for you. As a self-employed person, you sign a contract, giving up all your rights, and when you pay all the mandatory fees, you find that you don’t have much left. From the second league below, it operates on a semi-amateur basis, although the players are officially under professional contracts. But they probably start at ten thousand. I dare to say that from the lower division it is already a gray economy and the guys don’t even register as self-employed.
We then come back to the issue of whether football can be financially secured somehow and where promising young people should get motivation to grow.
It must be said that there is a well-established system of academies for players under the age of 18. Then the boy has to be lucky to be snapped up by a league club. But what about the others that the academies spit out, no one really cares anymore. Those boys then end up in divisions, in lower competitions in Austria and the like. At the same time, the performance growth and maturity of the player peaks somewhere around 23 or 24.
And these renegades could play the league one day?
I am convinced that this is how Czech football loses a lot of talent who could eventually make it to the league. We also did some study on it, many of the boys may end up playing football altogether. There are hundreds of guys a year who are no longer worked with.
How could FAČR fix it?
The solution is that, for example, a third league team that hires a young player from the academy could cover part of his salary from a contribution from the union. He should take part in ensuring that these young people develop further. I’m trying to talk to people from the football community about it, but he really wants to push this at union level.
At the same time, young guys appear in the lineups of first league teams…
Sure, they choose young guys who are physically so good at seventeen or eighteen that they can measure up to adults. But it seems to me similar to taking over players, like when agents recruit 150 footballers to the agency, but then only five agents take care of this number. They will then tell you that it is enough for them if five of the 150 succeed adequately. This often means that the remaining 145 do not have the adequate care they need.
And what kind of players come to you for help and advice?
They are guys across league competitions, for example we dealt with the situation around Jindra Novotný, who played for Prague Meteor. My colleague has a lot of contacts in minor football, where players from the division go, for example. Since I played football, from time to time someone will contact me asking if I could help them with something specific. But I’m not deliberately looking for anyone, I don’t want to act as an agent.
But that’s not your main job, is it?
No, I work in real estate, which I am close to thanks to my background in the construction industry. I am such a middleman in real estate deals. But since I have a source of finance somewhere else, I can also focus on how I could help football. Even if only on a philanthropic basis. I’m still looking for a bit, a function that would suit me probably isn’t here yet. But after all, I have quite a lot of experience from an active career, so I try to use it in some way.
Looking back at what you said about Czech football in this interview, can you still enjoy a football match on TV?
I can. I try to look at the match purely from a football point of view and not see all the mechanisms that affect the professional world. But I also had a period when I lost that joy from him. Then I realized that nothing is black and white and nothing changes overnight. That’s why I try to help or give advice to someone here and there when they ask me for it.
2023-08-17 04:46:58
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