It is almost two months since Livingston stopped paying him, and the rent for his flat. They cancelled the lease on the car that Dorado used to get from his home in the city to training and matches, and on July 18 they gave him a letter of redundancy and asked him not to return to the stadium. “They are killing me,” he says. “No money. No home. No car. No football.” Yet Dorado is contracted until May 2007 and has not breached the terms of that agreement. He is 33 and knows the stand he is taking could end his career.
This is an extreme example of an increasingly common kind of contractual dispute. The keystone that holds together player movement is a collective bargaining agreement between the league and the players’ union. Boiled down, it is a mutual understanding that contracts will be honoured by both parties and is replicated throughout Europe. If a contracted player joins another team, his club will be entitled to a transfer fee. If a club wishes to terminate a player’s contract, he is entitled to adequate compensation. Outwith administration, football does not recognise redundancy, just as an electrician or an accountant moving from one firm to another does not command a transfer fee. Players get contract protection, clubs get transfer fees. That’s the deal. If Livingston successfully challenge contract protection, the transfer system will face its greatest threat since Bosman.
The most alarming element in this case is Livingston’s decision to stop paying their player. This contravenes Scottish Football League rules stating that any punishment will be withheld until the end of the appeals process. This is also why he was forced to leave his girlfriend of two years and the country he has lived in for the last four, returning to his parents’ home in Paris last Friday. It is why, meeting in an Edinburgh cafe two days before his departure, he cut a desperate and distraught figure.
Dorado joined Livingston from Malaga in 2002. It was a good time to be at Almondvale; the club had just finished third in the Premierleague and qualified for the Uefa Cup. “It was another world,” he says.
He played in the 2004 CIS Cup final victory over Hibs in 2004, weeks after he saw friends sacked when the club went into administration. As part of those measures, Dorado was one of six players who took pay cuts and voided their existing contracts. At the end of that season he agreed a new two-year deal. Last year (the club had come out of administration in May 2005) that was extended to cover this season, with one modification. Dorado had not played 60% of the games so his wage dropped by
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£100 per week, in accord with a clause in his contract. There was no such clause covering relegation so when, at the end of last season, word got around that cuts would be made to sustain Livingston in the First Division, Dorado was unconcerned. “When I came back after the summer I thought this would be my last season,” he says. “I thought, ‘I will fight to get Livingston back into the SPL, then I will leave happy’.”
Dorado claims he was asked to take a wage cut of 60%, which he refused. He returned to train with John Robertson’s reshaped squad. He was paid in June, then after a further three weeks of training in July and with no compromise reached on compensation, he was told not to return. The letter he received on July 18 offered compensation of two weeks’ wages plus trimmings, amounting to a sum of around £3,000. “I thought it was a joke, I thought there was a hidden camera,” he says.
The SFL have received submissions from both parties but have yet to schedule the meeting of their appeals committee. Fraser Wishart, representing Dorado for the Scottish Professional Footballers’ Association, is “very confident” of a successful outcome. If that is not the way it goes, Dorado promises he will take his case to the SFA and Fifa. “I am very stubborn when I am right, and if I was wrong I would have left a long time ago,” he says. Livingston were unavailable for comment last night.
Dorado is now fighting not just his employer, but time. He has had two offers to sign for teams in Spain but neither club was prepared to wait until his situation had been resolved. Dorado was not prepared to “forgive” Livingston by dropping his complaint and moving on. “I am losing this year’s football,” he says. “They are playing with my money, with my life and with my future. What am I going to do now?” He does not look like he has the answer, yet he will not give up. “You can’t accept these things in life,” he says. “How can people decide on my future as if I was a piece of meat, moving when they want? No. We signed a contract. I am going to fight for that contract, because this is my life. Imagine if Livingston wanted to keep me, but another club wanted me. Can I say, ‘I’m leaving’? No, it’s not possible, they won’t accept it. I can’t do that from my side, but they think they can do it from theirs? No. Nobody wins. I’m finished with my career and they are going to lose and everybody will speak badly of them.”