There is a massive informal economy that revolves around amateur football. In every corner of South Africa, it creates employment, keeps money flowing through our townships and towns, and gives our (mostly unemployed) youth purpose and pride. For the talented and lucky few it is also a starting point for a lucrative career in the professional game.

On any given weekend, almost three million football players, coaches and referees connect with millions of fans next to fields or open pieces of dirt. More people are involved in amateur football than any other sport in South Africa, by far.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the trickle-down economics of South African football, there is none. The PSL hoards income from TV rights and large sponsorship deals. Almost nothing flows to the 40,000 poor clubs at the bottom of the pyramid.

Rent-seeking professional clubs attract skilled football players, but fail to fairly reward the often poor clubs that nurtured and developed the talent. Almost zero financial incentive for local football clubs to invest in their players may also partly explain the poor performance of our national teams.

Even the Nedbank Cup — championed as a link between the amateur and the professional — is owned by the PSL. There is a good reason why the South African Football Association (SAFA), the 403 SAFA structures responsible for provincial, regional and local football, and tens of thousands of clubs and football academies are perpetually broke.

Thanks to new Fifa legislation passed in Paris in June, this may begin to change. The creation of a clearing house for international solidarity payments is expected to inject millions of dollars and euros directly into the heart of our football economy — the clubs and coaches who build players from scratch.

A Solidarity Payment is 5% of a player’s transfer fee that goes to the clubs he or she played for before they turned 23. The contribution between developing clubs is calculated based on the age when the player joined the club and how long they played there.

Solidarity payments are not new. When Cristiano Ronaldo was transferred from Real Madrid to Juventus in 2018, his two previous clubs, Sporting Lisbon and Manchester United, received €12-million (R188-million).

Accessing these payments has been difficult.

A club needed to be aware of one of their former player’s international transfer (not so obvious when the player is in a second-division Turkish league) and then hire lawyers to approach the player’s new club.

Over the past 10 years, more than $1-billion in Solidarity Payments has gone unpaid worldwide. While there have been successful solidarity claims, South African clubs have been missing out on about R45-million a year.

The introduction of the cleaning house removes the need for a club to be aware of a trade or afford lawyer fees. As soon as the transfer happens, 5% is paid to the cleaning house. If the player’s Fifa Player Passport (a record of a player’s history) has information on who they played for, the clubs will be notified and the payments released.

The rapid adoption of MYSAFA, SA’s official football player registration system (which the author’s startup designed and is implementing) is assigning Fifa ID numbers to hundreds of thousands of amateur players playing in South Africa and adding stamps to their player passport. As a result and depending on new talent investment, more than R150-million is expected to flow into local clubs over the next five years.

More money flowing into clubs will mean more coaches and support staff can be hired, more fields can be rented, more service providers can be paid and more players can be developed. This will further increase the inflow of money, jobs created and building of football stars. The long-term effect of solidarity payments will ripple across South Africa.

Fifa’s international solidarity payments also set a precedent for domestic solidarity payments. What impact would 5% of all professional football transfers (domestic and international) going into local communities have on job creation, new industries and the performance of Bafana Bafana? Perhaps, if SAFA and the PSL have the will, we will find out. BM

Craig Rivett is the founder of Inqaku FC, SAFA’s technology partner for MYSAFA. To find out more about MYSAFA go to mysafa.net or mysafaclubpro.com