Looks like the madcap Swiss owner of Sion is going ahead with his plan to take his team to Madrid next week despite being booted out of the competition by UEFA. Despite Celtic now selling tickets for the match and Atletico changing the tickets to include Celtic, FC Sion owner Christian Constantin is convinced that his team are still in the competition and has arranged for his team to fly into Spain. To make matters worse they are due to arrive at the airport at the same time as Celtic. How far will he go in his plans to get reinstated? Can we look forward to the FC Sion players taking to the field at the same time as the Atletico and Celtic players? Things are about to get interesting!
I see all other swiss teams had a meeting yesterday about Sion too. They are pissed off that they have broken the rules and fear all swiss sides could lose their UEFA places if Sion continue to flout the rules in Swiss league. oth league games they have played have had the results appealed against also as the teams want 3-0 wins in their place. Could get messy for Sion really. But not sure how it can be fixed. If they are banned from playing the players then what happens to them? Sion will have to pay fees and wages for players they cant use. If they can use them Sion could technically be relegated if every result goes against them by default?!!! Big big mess!!
It does seem he's doing more harm than good with his actions. Does he really think UEFA will look favourably upon Sion by acting this way?
I didn't know all the stuff anportmor mentioned there. Sion would appear to be the Swiss Hearts. Crazy bastards.
I wonder if they have to rip up the player's contracts if we'd be able to snap up Feinduono? He looked a no bad player. A long shot I know.
The Spanish should hang onto the luggage for a bit so that there's an awkward stand-off in the baggage reclaim area. Could be a You Tube sensation.
We couldnt afford his wages last year - so cant see why we would now. That said if we did sign him i wonder would he be cup tied in the Europa league
Swiss courts now throw out their appeal , soon Sion will have nobody to turn to .Even the other swiss teams are getting peed off with them . We will be playing in Madrid a week tonight
There is a difference between "couldn't afford" and "wouldn't pay" - Sion's entire wage bill is 40k per week, less than Scott Brown and Joe Ledley combined. I am sure if we had valued him as being worth his wage demands then we could have paid.
I'd be very surprised if that was true, you've got Gabri an ex-Barca/Ajax man in the team and you've got ex-Monaco man Feindouno both of whom played in mega-rich Qatar before signing for Sion, I would be very surprised if their wages alone weren't at least £15-20k.
Your claiming that Sion's wage bill averages out at less than 2K per player per week Where did you get your figures?
Right, don't laugh but I got these particular figures from the Football Manager database. They base their figures on known variables, such as TV deals, Stadium size (11,000 seater) and average season ticket price. It is a best guess and doesn't work for wealthy owners pumping lots of their own money in, but it should be around about where a club of that size who comes 6th in the Swiss league are operating at. I tend to believe the estimate is not too far off, as Hearts the third biggest team in Scotland are operating at about 65k a week with an annual turnover of £9m. In comparison Cetic's public figures show their playing staff wages hovering around the 350k per week mark with an overall wage bill of 550k per week (around 30m per annum) as they have such a big staff bill for stewarding, media (Channel 67 + Celtic View) and the Celtic shops etc. Looking at Sions squad I'd say most of them would be lucky to get £2k per week - they've got a couple of players in there who were recently non league and even an ex Yeovil player - Gabri Garcia is a good example of a potential high earner but then again he is 32 and only started 13 games in Qatar last season. Anyway all this does is make it more embarrassing that they were able to beat us.
All I know is I read an interview with Neil Lennon and he said we couldn't afford his wages but Sion could. Read into that what you want.
Wikipedia at least quotes us as offering him 10k per week which was rejected (my great sources, Wikipedia and FM2011 ). We paid 15k a week to Freddy Ljungberg apparently (Sportingintelligence.com), it surely has to be a case of us not valuing him as highly as he valued himself.
And also Feinduono would have been on just over 5k per week in Scotland after tax (50p tax on everything over 150k per year) and he would have got the full £10k per week in Monaco with no income tax. He only started 5 games in a year in Monaco so I think it's fair to say he went for a pay cut to Sion (probably had a relegation release clause in his Monaco contract).
