Union Nationale des Footballeurs Professionnels

The Union Nationale des Footballeurs Professionnels (UNFP) is the French football players ' union . Founded in 1961 and based in Paris , it has since represented the interests of professional footballers towards clubs and associations in France , in particular the Fédération Française de Football (FFF) and the Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP). In 1965 she was also one of the founding members of the international umbrella association of player syndicates, the FIFPro .

Origin and development

Before the UNFP was founded in 1961, soon after the introduction of professionalism in French football (1932) there was a forerunner organization to represent the interests of professional footballers: in 1934/36 a group of players called the Amicale des joueurs professionnels (AJP) Life. With the war death of their " Spiritus rector ", Jacques Mairesse , the activities of the AJP also ended in 1940.

After the Second World War , it was especially the low pay even of national players - for example, Thadée Cisowski had to be content with an income that was just 20% above the statutory French minimum wage (SMIC) in 1961, at the end of his successful career - and that was critical As a "contract for life" called forced binding of young players, mostly inexperienced in contractual matters, to their first professional club up to their 35th birthday, which led to a revival of the union idea as early as the 1950s. The earliest driving force behind the founding of the UNFP, which took place on November 6, 1961 and was officially registered ten days later, was the Cameroonian player Eugène Njo-Léa , who later received his doctorate in law; Njo-Léa became its first general secretary under President Just Fontaine , who was in office until 1964 . In 1967, 257 of the 376 professional footballers (or 68%) were members of the union. As early as 1964, the FFF had to recognize the UNFP as the official interlocutor in cases in which players complained about a breach of contract.

In June 1963, Raymond Kopa started negotiations between the association and the union with the statement made in a France Dimanche interview, "The players are slaves of the clubs". It was not until the 1969/70 season that this dependency was lifted by introducing temporary contracts - initially with a duration of 4 years, later and especially since the Bosman judgment almost completely freely negotiable - ended up being. The occupation of the FFF office by football players under the slogan "Football for footballers!" In the French "May '68" contributed to this . After this success, Fontaine's successor, Michel Hidalgo , resigned from the office of UNFP President.

In 1972 the UNFP not only organized its first successful player strike , which led to the cancellation of an entire match day in Division 1 , but also supported its member Marius Trésor with a spectacular "kidnapping": because the clubs AC Ajaccio and Olympique Marseille involved in Trésor's club change did not agree Had adhered to the new transfer rules, the union lawyer Jacques Bertrand prevented Trésor from participating in a training camp for the national team for several hours , thus ensuring that the FFF had to stand up for the interests of the player.

Philippe Piat has presided over the UNFP since September 1969 ; At the end of 2006, he made Sylvain Kastendeuch his co-president in order to settle the upcoming question of succession. For the near future, Kastendeuch has formulated the “need to adapt union work to the changed conditions in professional football” because “today's generation of players is subject to many temptations and distractions”; But the UNFP also wants to sensitize them “for social responsibility and the principle of solidarity”. The level of organization among French professional footballers continues to be unrivaled: in the 2010/11 season, over 93% of all players under contract in France's top two leagues were members of the UNFP, an increase of 6% compared to the same period in the previous year, and one season later even over 96 %.

57 years after it was founded, a female soccer player was accepted into the governing body of the UNFP for the first time . In October 2018, Eugénie Le Sommer was elected a member of the Comité directeur .

Activities and Financing

The main activities of the UNFP consist in the support of its members in the case of contractual conflicts and in measures for their social security. To this end, the union founded Europ Sports Assur as early as 1988 , an insurance company that provides financial support to players and their families in the event of accidents, disability and death. Since 1990, the UNFP has also organized training camps for professionals without a contract; Europ Sports Reconversion has been offering courses since 1991 to qualify players for a professional life after their sporting career. In 2002, a player agency company was added through the establishment of Europ Sports Management . In addition, the UNFP is active in the national committees of the FFF and LFP as well as the international committees of the FIFPro, of which Philippe Piat was president from 2005 to 2007. Since 2004, the organization has also regularly participated - often in a leading role - in campaigns against violence and racism in football. In 2009, together with other organizations, she launched the action “Les gestes qui sauvent” (hand movements that save lives) , which promotes immediate measures ( cardiopulmonary resuscitation ) to prevent sudden cardiac death , for example on sports fields. The focus of UNFP activities is currently on defending against the LFP and FFF's intended plan to abolish the winter break.

One of the most effective publicity activities is the annual award of players (recently also female players), coaches and teams of French professional football with the "Oscars du football de l'UNFP", since 2004 known as the " Trophées de l'UNFP ". The award ceremony has been broadcast live on French private television channel Canal + for several years .

The UNFP budget for the 2011/12 season is around 10 million euros. Around 70% of this comes from the FFF's income for the award of television rights - a claim that the UNFP had already negotiated with the association in the 1980s. Other important income items are membership fees and payments from partner companies, including Axa , to the UNFP subsidiary Promo-Foot , which was founded in 1975 for this purpose . On the expenditure side, the so-called “direct social support payments to players” are particularly significant at around two million euros.

literature

• Fédération Française de Football (ed.): 100 dates, histoires, objets du football français. Tana, o. O. 2011, ISBN 978-2-84567-701-2
• France Football: UNFP - Cinquante ans et toutes ses dents. Issue 3423 from November 15, 2011
• Alfred Wahl / Pierre Lanfranchi: Les footballeurs professionnels des années trente à nos jours. Hachette, Paris 1995, ISBN 978-2-0123-5098-4

Web links

• Official UNFP website
• Anniversary page of the UNFP

Notes and evidence

1. ↑ see “Création de l'UNFP” ( Memento of the original dated November 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the UNFP anniversary page, there the message from November 16, 1961 (No. 1 of 49) 
2. ↑ Wahl / Lanfranchi, p. 177f.
3. ↑ Wahl / Lanfranchi, p. 180
4. ↑ see for example Denis Chaumier: Les Bleus. Tous les joueurs de l'équipe de France de 1904 à nos jours. Larousse, o. O. 2004, ISBN 2-03-505420-6 , pp. 177f.
5. ^ Fédération Française de Football, pp. 118/119
6. ↑ Wahl / Lanfranchi, p. 181ff.
7. ↑ France Football, p. 30
8. ↑ see “Le kidnapping de Trésor” ( Memento of the original from November 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the UNFP anniversary page, there the message from November 21, 1972 (No. 9 of 49) 
9. ^ France Football, p. 31
10. ↑ see “Récords d'adhésion à l'UNFP” ( Memento of the original dated November 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the UNFP anniversary page, there the message from January 31, 2011 (No. 48 of 49) 
11. ↑ France Football of March 13, 2012, p. 13
12. ↑ Article “ Eugénie Le Sommer as the first woman elected to the UNFP Steering Committee ” from October 13, 2018 at footofeminin.fr
13. ↑ see "L'UNFP crée Europ Sports Assur" ( Memento of the original from November 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the UNFP anniversary page, there the message from May 5, 1988 (No. 18 of 49) 
14. ↑ ^{a b} France Football, p. 29
15. ↑ see "Campagne against the violence et le racisme" ( Memento of the original from November 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the UNFP anniversary page, there the message from November 1, 2004 (No. 34 of 49) 
16. ↑ see the statement by Piats (“Don't touch my break”) of December 13, 2011 on the France Football website
17. ↑ see “Cérémonie des Trophées du football” ( Memento of the original dated November 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the UNFP anniversary page, there the message from June 15, 1988 (No. 19 of 49) 
18. ↑ see “Création Promo-Foot” ( memento of the original dated November 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the UNFP anniversary page, there the message from May 5, 1975 (No. 14 of 49)