Inter CEO Beppe Marotta has explained that the Nerazzurri were one of the only clubs in Italy not to have reduced the wages earned by players during the pandemic.
Speaking at the Sport Festival of Trento, as reported by FCInter1908, the executive stated that the players’ will was to not accept a salary reduction, and that the club decided to respect this demand.
The world of football saw a number of clubs ask their players to accept wage cuts during the pandemic, with the massive economic impact of reduced revenues seeing clubs struggle to honour the full wages owed to players and needing some respite.
In many cases, players have agreed to some degree of reduction to their salaries at the request of their clubs, but as Marotta explained, this was not the case at Inter.
Despite the club asking for the reduction, the players did not wish to accept any cuts, and so the club paid the full wages owed.
“The players have not yet understood things well,” Marotta stated. “They live in a gilded world, they earn a lot. They are not used to having to face the problems that every family faces in everyday life. They are very young guys.”
“It is up to us to try to educate them, train them, give them a culture,” he went on. “There was an awareness on the part of the players in understanding the drama but it was understood more from the point of view of safeguarding their financial health than in the context of reasoning with the club about a reduction in wages.”
He emphasized that “Nonetheless, Inter was one of the few clubs in Italy that fully respected the contracts with their players, we paid all the salaries, we didn’t get any discounts from the players but we did it also in light of the performances in these two years of results.”
“After a polite discussion with the players,” he concluded, “we decided not to push too hard to do something they didn’t feel like doing [reduce salaries].”
