Elite Soccer’s Culture of Graft | Hacker News Reader

Elite Soccer’s Culture of Graft

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56 pointsevilsimon48 comments

Tax minimization schemes go through trends and fads just like any other area of creativity. When the accountants and lawyers come up with a scheme for one celebrity footballer, it is likely to get used again for others. Once it becomes common enough the government closes the loophole and the creatives go back to finding the next scheme.

Sometimes the court decides the scheme is illegal and then they go after all those that used it. Politically it looks good to grab money from millionaires that look like they were exploiting your system. I doubt the footballers know much, if anything, about the details of the schemes they are involved in. The accountant says 'leave to me, I can save you millions' and the footballer concentrates on playing.

> Once it becomes common enough the government closes the loophole and the creatives go back to finding the next scheme.

Creatives? Do you mean criminals. I do believe it is necessary to socially stigmatize the crime, if we do want to improve things. Pedophiles can be creative, but we do not go around saying "then, the creatives find a new to continue distributing child porn". (Extreme example chosen on purpose.)

> Politically it looks good to grab money from millionaires that look like they were exploiting your system.

Sure, or maybe it actually is good, because you get funds to use for public projects?

You can watch an excellent summary about Ronaldo and Messi's tax fines in this short video from Tifo Football published today:

Ronaldo & Messi's Tax Fines & Suspended Prison Sentences Explained:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP5vuflIdrQ

In fact, Tifo Football on YouTube is one of the best sources of news, information and analysis on football (soccer) - regardless of whether you like football or not. The quality is excellent:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGYYNGmyhZ_kwBF_lqqXdAQ/vid...

TIFO football is fantastic, they really go underneath the game and show that Football is not just a game but a branch of international Politics and finance.

Relatedly -- The Football Leaks series by a number of large journalism outfits in Europe are illuminating. My favorite set is about Doyen, a Turkish group hiding their illegal ownership in a number of players who happen to be founded by one of the people implicated in Trump's failed Trump SoHo project (Tevkik Arif). We don't do nearly enough to stop and punish white collar crime:

https://theblacksea.eu/stories/football-leaks/football-leaks...

It boils down again and again to how elites in general can avoid taxation anywhere by being everywhere. Related:

https://twitter.com/rcbregman/status/1088793422113185794?s=2...

This is just a result of the culture in the areas where soccer is most popular. Most notably, south america, where the sneaky underdog grifter that defrauds others is almost a cultural icon and hero rather than a scoundrel.

If you're interested in seeing the prevalent philosophy in these places, watch "Nueve Reinas (2000)".

Interesting that Messi had tax problems in Spain as well.

Neither of these guys are filling out their own taxes.

Why did their accountants think it was a good idea to complete their taxes in a way that wound up getting them in trouble?

Or why did Spain think these guys were alluring targets to spend finite prosecutorial resources on?

The answer to both questions is surely "several million dollars"?

This stuff happens a lot. Celebrities don't make money through a business front nor do they get to class it as capital gains. It's all "income", so the incentive to turn it into a cheaper tax category or hide it offshore is huge.

See also the Glasgow Rangers collapse due to tax fraud.

I'm sure celebrities can easily package their offerings as an LLC or the like. It's just that then you can't spend it however you like.

You want to spend your money however you like? That's income. "They can't play tax tricks to avoid income tax" is the system working, not a bug

I would think protecting their image for endorsement potential is worth more than even millions of dollars of tax savings

The problem is likely that they have no leverage. If they were a company owner employing hundreds or thousands of people, with the power to fire them all and relocate, I'm not sure they would see the same outcome.

One must remember that (cross-border) tax law is highly ambiguous. Since you can arrange your own affairs in the most tax efficient way, everyone always tries to get a beneficial outcome. If you add an international component to that, you'll quickly end up in situations where there often is no clear right or wrong answer because tax systems don't look at certain things in the same way.

Spain isn't the best place to live if you have money, in particular due to the wealth tax.

I can't find the episode, but Planet Money had an episode where they found the US tax department made a deliberate target of celebrities, with the expectation that public prosecution of these people (think Martha Stewart) would result in higher tax compliance. This makes them a better ROI than your local greengrocer.

Spain, or its tax agency cannot cover (or will not cover) all fraud areas. It will creat FUDs with big cases to have everyone in line from that moment on, but it is really difficult also to cover all ground.

Mourinho (a famous coach) too.

Off topic but

"Rui Pinto, a Portuguese national"

Now I remember doing a case study on the Ford Pinto in South America, Pinto translates into a rude word in Portugese doesn't it???

Is it like Dick (Richard) in English. Or am I missing some subtlety here.

Edit: Link for Translation http://www.youswear.com/sitemap.asp?language=Portuguese+(bra...

Yes, you are right! Pinto is a very common surname that can also mean "dick". When used in this context it does not call a lot of attention - but it would be unthinkable to call a product "Pinto"

In Brazil only. In Portugal it's just the name of the little chicks (chicken after they hatch).

Thanks.

I wonder if the slang is a transliteration from one language to the other, or it's just coincidence.

What I always find interesting is that if a professional soccer player is caught only a (in absolute terms) substantial amount of money is fined, while "ordinary" people would certainly go behind bars in addition to paying the money. The 23 months seems to be quite a joke to insult the intellect of these ordinary citizens.

Which ordinary person in Spain has gone behind bars for their first time offense of tax evasion?

So under 2 years no jail for first time offenders and he was conditionally sentenced to 23 months :)? A lot of these guys might not understand the laws, lawyers suggest ways to "pay less taxes" and "John did it too" and it's done. Their taxes aren't as simple as entering the W2 info on a web form.

Football hasn't been about the game for a long time but a branch of International politics and finance.

In this article ‘graft’ means corruption or similar, rather than ‘hard work’. Slightly confusing.

Graft is a funny word. It seems to come from horticulture and means "to join or unite". Then it's used as a synonym for work, especially hard work, which doesn't have an obvious relation to the horticultural use. Then there's the corruption meaning, which is a metaphor of how a parasite forms a union with its host, I presume. So if you're being metaphoric, "graft" can be used for a harmonic union and an abusive union. There aren't a lot of words like that, I think.

According to https://www.etymonline.com/word/graft ...

graft (the horticultural concept) derives ultimately from the Greek for "stylus", after the knife used in the process, and this etymology is considered reliable.

graft (British English for your job) is not well understood but speculated to come from the word graft (meaning ditch/trench), possibly from Dutch.

graft (American English for corruption) is speculated to come from the British word for your job. It's not felt to be related to the horticultural term.

Thanks for the link, I think I'll be coming back to that site from time to time. My long time favorite dictionary is thefreedictionary.com, but with graft, for the first time the description was subpar.

"Cleave" can mean both "to split apart" or "to join together".

In that vein sanction can mean approve (homologate) and it can mean punish, penalize.

There’s more than you’d think. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:English_contranyms

The title uses the word "soccer", which should lead you to expect the American meaning of "graft" rather than the British meaning.

Sure but it seems I'm not the only Brit who was completely unaware of the American meaning.

It’s amusing since “soccer” was British slang for association football.

I didn't realise this was an Americanism.

At least in Australia both meanings are common and it has always seemed pretty clear from the context which meaning was which.

Thanks for mentioning this. The article at least seems clear from the start it's talking about tax fraud and evasion but that headline had me expecting a very different article.

This may be another case of English speaking communities being separated by the same language.

Huh. Indeed it is. I'm American, and I did not even realize that "graft" meant "hard work" in British English.

I'm a Brit and graft means hard work. I don't think I've ever heard it used in the sense of the article though - implying corruption. Graft, grafting etc (short "a") is a word I would generally associate with the north midlands (!) of England and up, ie around Derbyshire and up.

It is understood elsewhere in the UK but not used routinely. It might, say, be deployed for additional effect by someone not from northern England and imply very hard work. However, it might be pronounced in an exaggerated, imitation "generic Yorkshire" accent in which case it gets a bit complicated to explain.

...

Actually, isn't the US word "grift" rather than "graft"?

Grift means swindle, or trick, often used as a verb. Taking advantage of someone without them realizing it. Graft usually has the connotation of bribery. A con-man would be called a grifter, while a politician would be accused of graft.

Ta for the explanation.

The closest Americanism that comes to mind for this term would be "grit", which I think is a bit different as it's more about enduring hardship (or hard work) than actually working hard. I think the word "hussle" is used similarly sometimes.

I've definitely come across the word "grifter" as a synonym for someone who defrauds people ("marks") in en_US.

"Grit" is a perfectly valid en_GB word meaning the same (enduring hardship.)

Interesting, I'm Australian and I understood it in the American sense. Haven't ever heard the British meaning used.

Yeah, I'm British and I thought I knew most Americanism's, but I didn't know this one!

Why isn't the British term spelled "graught"?

This article details both the different regional definitions of graft, as well as the reasons it's spelled as it is: https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2012/01/graf...

Spoilers: US usage is always negative, Australian usage mostly matches US, British is mostly positive, India is both. Someone asks the same spelling question, and gets the answer that it is because the word was only written down in either meaning quite late.

I enjoyed the tongue in cheek question, but words where "aught" sounds like "aft" are Germanic in origin (such as laughter or draught), whereas "graft" is French in origin :-)

A lot of the more unusual spellings in British English (in particular) relate to trying to distinguish words by their origin.

etymonline suggests that "graft" the horticultural term is French in its immediate origin (Greek in actual origin; the French word descends from a Greek word borrowed into Latin), but "graft" the term for a job is more likely... Dutch. It isn't related to the other graft.

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