www.theaustralian.com.au
According to this Kim has gone home and we might not get him back either in time to restart or at all.
A-League’s foreign players caught offside without wages
Victory marquee Ola Toivonen is widely expected to join Swedish side Malmo.
They are the A-League’s forgotten foreign legion — the visa players who have not been paid a cent since mid-March, and yet will be expected to play again if the competition resumes as planned in July.
With foreign players excluded from the federal government’s JobKeeper program, visa signings at a majority of the A-League clubs have still been paid an equivalent sum by their employers since the league was suspended.
But the foreign players at Adelaide, the Mariners and Perth have not been paid, leaving them reliant in some cases on cash handouts from their union or on money sent from family in their homelands.
Some have told teammates that their health insurance has not been paid by their club — usually a condition of their visa — and others have found out from landlords that their accommodation is overdue. Others, such as those at the Mariners, were told they could access their superannuation.
Some visa players, such as Mariners defender Kim Eun-sun, have returned home during the A-League’s suspension and almost certainly won’t come back, at least in time for the final month of the season due to kick off on July 18.
They now have the right to sign elsewhere, with Melbourne Victory marquee Ola Toivonen widely expected to join Swedish side Malmo.
Others have preferred to stay here, given Australia’s relative success in controlling the coronavirus, even though in some cases they have been scrambling just to put food on the table.
In Britain, the government’s JobKeeper-style scheme includes foreign employees based in the UK, and a number of lower league clubs have used it.
There is the promise of some relief. As part of the pay deal agreed with Football Federation Australia and the A-League clubs last week, all players will receive a proportion of their usual wages for the next three months.
On top of that, JobKeeper payments will continue for domestic players but it is understood that the A-League players as a whole will aggregate the JobKeeper payments for the next three months and split them equally across all squad members, both Australian and foreign.
But with huge uncertainty over the status of the last three years of the A-League’s broadcast contract with Fox Sports, and no match-day income expected to be earned by clubs for many months, some of the players are not confident of the future.
“It was the clubs that brought us here, surely we are their responsibility?” said one. “In many cases we can’t leave, because there aren’t flights or they cost a fortune.”