Leicester City will have seven players at the tournament in Qatar and their participation entitles the club to payments depending on how long they are there for
Leicester City’s World Cup stars are set to earn more than £1million for the club from Fifa.
Seven City players will be representing their nations in Qatar over the next month, with club football on hold. But in recognition of the contribution clubs make to preparing players, and releasing them, for tournaments, City will be compensated by world football’s governing body.
The Club Benefits Programme will see Fifa pay out approximately £8,500 per player per day while their countries are competing in Qatar. With the six-day ‘official preparation period’ covered too, City’s septet are guaranteed to be worth £161,500 each, given they will all remain at the tournament until the end of the 13-day group stage. That takes the total to £1.13m, even if they are all eliminated at the first hurdle.
How often each player features for the country is irrelevant to the fee clubs are entitled to, however, not all of the payments go to the sides where players are currently contracted. The fees are split between all the clubs where players were contracted in the two years prior to the World Cup, and so compensate all of the teams that had to release players for qualification periods.
For City, that means the pot generated by Wout Faes’ participation will have to be split with French side Reims, who he represented before moving to the King Power Stadium for £15m in the summer. But, it will also see City receive a chunk of the payments generated by title-winning goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel, who will represent Denmark at the tournament, and Kamal Sowah, who joins Daniel Amartey in the Ghana squad and who was sold to Club Brugge in 2021.
James Maddison with England and Faes, Youri Tielemans, and Timothy Castagne with Belgium are expected to go deep into the tournament and there are a further 16 days of knock-out football after the group stages. Clubs with players who reach the final in Qatar will be entitled to £297,500 per player.
City’s tally of seven players at the tournament is the joint-sixth highest of Premier League clubs, level with Liverpool, and only below Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea, Tottenham, and Arsenal. In 2018, City had 10 players in Russia for which they were calculated to receive €1.62m (then £1.47m), which was the 15th-highest total earned by a club.
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