Why European Football Loses Its Stars: The Race Is About Tax Eligibility, Not Contract Value

A cafe in Milan, late December 2026. I was reading that the Italian government had decided not to renew Decreto Crescita, the growth decree that allowed Serie A clubs to pay 50 percent less tax on new foreign workers, and up to 70 percent under certain conditions. That same week, three names Milan and Inter were quietly chasing changed destinations. Nobody called it a tragedy. They called it the law.

People ask why, at 68, I still write as if the apocalypse is coming. I just smile. After 52 years watching this industry, I have seen the pattern often enough: football loses its stars not simply because rivals pay more, but because its own incentive system no longer meets the eligibility conditions to keep them.

When I was thrown out of the press conference in Tokyo, my question stayed on the table. It was simple: if a football nation loses its best people, who is actually deciding — the coach, or the tax clauses nobody wants to read aloud?

For more than a decade, tax law has been part of tactics, quite literally. In 2026, Spain passed the "Beckham Law," allowing new foreign workers to pay a flat rate of roughly 24 percent instead of progressive income tax. Real Madrid and Barcelona benefited immediately: expensive contracts became cheaper after tax than in London or Milan. England fumbled, France struggled under high rates, and Serie A at the time thought money was everything — until it realised net money is what players actually look at.

In 2026, Italy launched Decreto Crescita. It was, in essence, a programme for foreign workers moving to Italy: halving the tax burden, and if they brought their family or bought a home, the reduction could reach 70 percent. Immediately, Serie A used it as strategy. Clubs that could not outbid the Premier League suddenly had a different pitch: "We pay less on paper, but you keep more in your pocket."

Then the ball rolled in a different direction. Saudi Arabia entered with something stronger than any incentive: a zero percent personal income tax rate. This is the crux of the whole story. Not the oil money, but the tax structure. For a player at his peak, the gap between 45 percent and zero is not an accounting detail — it is a third of a career.

Sitting with the numbers of this race, what made me pause was not how high the tax was, but how it was designed to exclude whom. A programme can look generous in a press release yet be useless to exactly the player you need to keep, simply because the door closes at the "eligibility" page. Football is the only thing I know where people worship safety as an achievement — and now it is the safety of clauses nobody checks.

Italy is the clearest case. Decreto Crescita was born to stop Serie A from bleeding, and it worked: between 2026 and 2026, a wave of foreign players chose Italy over familiar destinations. But when the programme was stopped for football from the start of 2026, what remained were long-term contracts already signed; the next deals quietly went elsewhere. The programme still existed on paper. Italy simply closed its own door.

Spain went first and reached the end point: the Beckham Law was designed for a specific group, delivered an edge during the golden era of Real and Barca, then was tightened once it became a political burden. In France, high tax rates once cost clubs names they had to buy back more expensively years later. In England, the non-dom story — an economy-wide question — touches directly how London clubs pay foreign stars.

The comparison exposes a paradox. Leagues described as "the richest in history" turn out to be losing a race they refuse to admit they are in: the race for eligibility. Spain had a programme and narrowed it. Italy had a programme and ended it. France never had the courage to cut tax. Saudi Arabia did not need a programme — it has a system, a system that taxes nothing, and it applies to every player regardless of nationality or age.

Money is the necessary condition. Tax structure is the sufficient one. That is the point European media keeps misreading. People say Saudi Arabia "bought" the stars with state money. True, but incomplete. What truly keeps stars there is a legal framework that lets them keep their money, not merely a bigger cheque.

I once watched MLS do this differently. In the United States, income tax is set by the state, not the league. That creates a playing field where a team in Florida — with no state income tax — has a real advantage over a team in California, where rates are among the highest in the country. Nobody talks about it on television because it is boring. But it is real, and it shows up in how clubs structure contracts.

This is what I want to stress: the race is not between leagues, it is between legal systems. A player does not compare Real Madrid with Al-Nassr. He compares what he keeps after tax in Madrid with what he keeps in Riyadh. And when that gap is wide enough, every speech about history, tradition and the feeling of playing before 80,000 people becomes decoration.

After years of watching transfers, I have drawn one simple rule: tax incentives are the most politically changeable element in all of football. Kits, stadiums, even a whole generation of supporters can last decades. But an incentive programme can be cut in a single budget meeting. Decreto Crescita died that way. The Beckham Law was tightened that way. Which means any club building strategy on tax relief is betting on something beyond its own control — the kind of risk a balance sheet never records, and an unrecorded risk is the most dangerous kind.

Based on my experience watching matches and transfer windows, I have seen this principle at a smaller scale. The 2026 season was wiped out, but I still held my bet on a second-tier club. When the J.League was suspended for COVID-19, the entire press corps went home to wait for football. I stayed in Osaka, following Cerezo Osaka through four months without a match, and I saw something nobody bothered to look at: the teams that won were not the richest, but the fastest to adapt to new conditions. Cerezo won six straight when the league resumed and climbed to the top group. Applied to tax, the principle holds: whoever understands the rules moves faster than whoever has money but refuses to read them.

Here I must argue against myself, because a writer who only contradicts others and never doubts himself is just noise. Three things I may have misread.

First, I may be putting too much weight on tax when what truly draws players is the spotlight: playing in the Champions League, competing for individual awards, being remembered. Players at the top do not only think about net money; they think about legacy. A 26-year-old star can still turn down double the money to keep his place in a European quarter-final.

Second, my data on a "wave leaving Europe" may be inflated by a few loud deals. A handful of names leaving does not make a systemic trend. If I am wrong, I am turning a phenomenon into a law — exactly the error I usually accuse others of.

Third, and this is the most uncomfortable: maybe European leagues have not lost at all. Maybe they are simply choosing the right people rather than keeping everyone at any price. The Champions League still decides a player's true value, and no tax programme can buy the feeling of scoring at the Bernabeu on an April night.

But if I must pick one bet, I pick structure. Because media data tables are always easier to sell than a dry line of law — and it is those dry lines of law that decide who stays.

In my view, the coming years will expose something European media does not yet want to admit: the contest for stars will be decided in budget meetings, not on the pitch. Federations that keep a clear, accessible and stable incentive programme will keep their people; federations still proud of their history while forgetting to design their laws will keep losing names, one by one.

I will follow this the way I once followed Cerezo Osaka through four months without football. And my bet is specific: another star, at his very peak, will leave Europe before the coming season ends — and the reason will be written across the papers in one very boring word: tax.

My question is still on the table. And it will stay there longer than the people who want it silenced.