Gordon Sharrock: Financial pain in Spain falling on the game

Internationally they are World and European Champions while on the club front they have the champions of Europe in Barcelona and in Real Madrid boast the most successful team in Europe and arguably the most glamorous club on the planet.

Yet last weekend the start of the Spanish League was postponed because of a players’ strike.

Some 200 players from the top two divisions had not been paid – for more than three months in some cases – and their union failed to get the agreement they were looking for on a bigger emergency fund to protect its members from clubs who are using bankruptcy protection laws to wriggle out of paying them.

Surely there has to be something seriously wrong when, just days after Barca signed Cesc Fabregas from Arsenal in a deal worth £35million, financially-stricken rivals are unable or unwilling to fulfil their obligations.

What a contrast. Fabregas is so wellheeled that he has taken a pay cut and waived a four-year “loyalty”

bonus, worth £4 million, from Arsenal to facilitate his transfer yet players at financially troubled clubs are forced to withdraw their labour because they haven’t been paid since the end of last season. Collectively they are owed around £45million.

It only seems fair that players are afforded a degree of protection but the clubs are reluctant to agree a deal that would assure players are paid when they go into administration – as is the case in most European leagues.

Such attitudes belong in the dark ages, not the 21st century.

When the latest meeting on Monday ended without an agreement, the players’ union confirmed the strike would continue this weekend.

But I wonder how long the powerful club presidents are prepared to maintain their hard-line stance.

I certainly wouldn’t want to be the person responsible for denying the football-addicted Spaniards their weekly fix.

Nothin