Footballers denounce clubs

The Mozambique Football Players’ Union (SJFM) on Wednesday denounced attempts by “many clubs” in the country to take advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to force players to terminate their employment contracts.“Many clubs in the first and second division are pressuring players to terminate contracts on the grounds that they do not have financial capacity because of the pandemic,” the president of the SJFM, Tony Gravata, himself a former player, told.

Gravata described the clubs’ attitude as one of “bad faith” because some owe several months’ wages to players and were therefore in breach of contract before the Covid-19 outbreak.

“These terminations will make it impossible for the players to receive the months of wages in arrears, once the contractual relationship with the clubs has ended,” he said.

The SJFM president said that the union, along with the Mozambican Football League (LMF) and the Mozambican Football Federation (FMF), has set up a working group to study possible solutions along with the Ministry of Employment, in case of a prolonged suspension or cancellation of football matches.

The group “will analyse all scenarios according to the development of Covid-19 in Mozambique,” said Gravata.For this reason, he went on, the termination of contracts due to the epidemic is jumping the gun, given that the suspension of sports activity in the country has not lasted long enough to justify such actions.

“For us it is imprudent to talk about termination of contracts, because nothing is yet clear regarding the duration of the suspension of the events,” he argued.Mozambique’s 2020 football championship was supposed to start on Saturday, but has been postponed because of the Covid-19.Mozambique is in a state of emergency for the whole of April because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and all sports events have been suspended.The country has officially registered 10 positive cases of infection, of which one has recovered.The new coronavirus responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic has so far infected around 1.4 million people worldwide, of whom over 80,000 have died and around 260,000 are considered cured.