Beijing time on May 22, according to the French news agency reported, LiaoZhou football former foreign aid Mulenga (Jacob Mulenga) and Taizhou YuanDa Croatian former foreign aid Basiqi (Marko Basic) complained about their own experience of being owed wages by China's salons.
The Liaoning Hongyun salon has been put up for auction to pay the money owed to the players, but the money raised is a far cry from the $850,000 Mulenga has indicated the salon owes him, AFP has indicated. The Zambian striker is not the only foreigner attempting to claim back wages owed to him by the country's salons, as Croatian midfielder Bassić is also in such a predicament, and it is not yet clear how much he is owed.
Both Mulenga and Bacic claimed that their signatures had been forged by the salon to cover up the reality that salaries had not been paid. AFP pungently labeled the issue of salons defaulting on players' salaries as nothing new to Chinese soccer, but the problem reached an extreme with the bankruptcy of Jiangsu Salon in February local time - just 100 days after the team won the Chinese Super League title.
"I want to make this as public as possible, and the more people know the better. Everyone must take responsibility until I am paid." Mulenga, who now plays in the Dutch second division, told AFP in a telephone interview, "I contacted FIFA to ask them what to do about the $850,000 I was owed by the salon, but FIFA told me that the salon doesn't exist any more, so we can't do anything about it."
Liaoning, once the dominant team in the Chinese Super League and the 1990 Asian Club Cup champions, disbanded last May. Mulenga indicated that he was not paid in his second season with Liaoning: "Meanwhile, the Chinese Super League is going on ...... defaulting on foreign players' salaries as if nothing had arisen."
Basich, 32, also flagged that he was owed two months, or about $90,000, of his salary last season by Taizhou Yuanda, a salon that was founded just four years ago and abruptly dissolved in March. Like Mulenga, Bacic claimed that the salon forged his signature on documents indicating that they had been paid so that they could be allowed to continue playing.
"They forged our signatures and registered them without any problems." Basci, who wouldn't divulge his story before leaving the country, told AFP reporters from his home in Switzerland, "They forged 15 signatures to say we got paid everything. Part of my salary was paid in cash and I wrote to the International Sports Adjudication Tribunal in January, but there was no response."
FIFA did not respond to an AFP reporter's request for comment, while the Chinese Football Association (CFA) is blaming a "handful" of salons, saying it is a matter for the courts and labor rulings. More than 20 salons have pulled out of the working league in the past two years because of financial problems, a warning to foreigners intent on making money in the Chinese Super League, where the country, which attracted foreign stars such as Oscar, who was worth 60 million euros in 2017, is now tightening its belt. Global soccer union federation FIFPro flagged concerns to the country's FA last year, telling AFP, "Given the large number of salons presented that have already closed with little to no notice, we are worried not only about the sustainability of working soccer in our country, but also about the lack of appropriate mechanisms to protect the livelihoods of players."
