PFA Scotland chief executive Fraser Wishart believes clubs will soon be banned from forcing senior players to train alone or with youth teams.
The most recent case was Kenny Miller being banished to the Rangers Under-20 squad by Pedro Caixinha before the Portuguese was sacked at the end of last month.
Wishart’s confidence stems from an agreement signed between the world players’ union FIFPro and Fifa on Monday. Both sides have entered a six-year accord to improve the governance of football after FIFPro agreed to drop their attempt to end the transfer system.
“This agreement is very positive and better than getting rid of the whole transfer system,” Wishart said. “That might be calamitous for a number of our clubs.”
The most pressing issue for FIFPro is that of players not being paid on time, and they also want to see better distribution of the huge sums of money circulating at the top end of football.
“One of the main concerns is that the big clubs are getting bigger, and the big agents and top players are getting richer,” Wishart said. “That money is not filtering down.”
Although there was a major problem at Hearts with players not being paid when Vladimir Romanov owned the club, Wishart said: “The agreement with the SPFL now is that if you don’t pay wages or tax on time that is a breach straight away – the clubs have to tell the league. Then immediate disciplinary measures start, which helps the players and the integrity of the game.
“I think we will also see regulation to deal with the situation of players who are made to train on their own. It still happens in Scotland. Because the management doesn’t fancy a player, or there has been a fall out, they are made to train at different times of the day, or on their own, or with the youth team. In many cases that’s really just to get them out the door.
“Kenny Miller was a recent example. Regulation will be brought in to ensure players can’t be treated this way – it would be unacceptable in any other walk of life.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel