Quote Originally Posted by Terry Tuffnutz View Post
I’m not sure you can base payment on performance in a team game. For overall achievement as a unit there should be a bonus much like any job but unlike a vast majority of jobs, you cannot quantify a sportsman’s performance within a team purely on stats, as you would a salesman for example. On top of that you have incidents that are completely out of the control of the player, such as injuries, bad decisions by team mates that dictate and influence his performance as well as just pure bad luck. In every other job it is down to the individual who will not have to deal with these circumstances (bar long term illness) so it is hard to marry the two ideals.
The 'out of your hand' incidents, I don't see a problem with that. There are external factors in most high paying jobs too; you're often dependent on other members of the team performing well. As I said, you can be 'unlucky' but that's life; everyone faces that and footballers should be no different. If RVP you lose out on a team bonus because your teammates play shit, again, tough luck. You win together and you lose together. But as I've said you can still hold on to your star players by offering greater individual incentives. I accept it's harder to find player-specific performance proxies for a Modric, say, but there are ways of balancing it to achieve the optimal outcome. e.g. the back four get x for a clean sheet, the midfield get y for a cleansheet and the strikers get z for a clean sheet. If you weight it properly, you ensure that everyone finds it worthwhile to put a shift in.

We're obviously not talking about a world of exclusively performance-related pay. Players will always get a base wage regardless of performance and even regardless of whether they play. That should be fair enough for them.