There's a great story by Foredeckdave in his thread about George Eastham, where he mentions Billy Liddell and how accessible the guy was, and i recommend you check it out if you haven't already. However as a byproduct of that and because certain people have begun to mention it more and more lately in threads here, i thought i'd take a look at just how much players earn, and maybe see whether you guys think they deserve it. I can't be bothered to write out a full in depth article with specific player examples right now, but I will start debate by arguing for the wages players earn as this angle isn't often championed, and i look forward to a response! People will always claim there's no soul anymore, and in football the rose-tinted spectacles practically stretch from goal-line to goal-line. Money is to blame right? Rafael Benitez came from Valencia, was paid a rather significant wage then severance package, and yet was moved to tears at the recent Hillsborough memorial service. The fans sung his name, gave hime a standing ovation, and he has no shortage of handshakes and smiles for the people of Liverpool. The loyalty, passion and emotion are still there for this Spaniard, and there's no way he could have fallen in love with Liverpool if it had lost its soul. Everyone has a car now, so not even Billy Liddell would be taking the tram these days, though recently Gerrard took the coach with the fans to the Villa match and watched the game with them. Even Mario Balotelli drove a kid to school who was being bullied to sort things out, and that's probably the modern equivalent of giving your seat up on the bus. Even the maddest footballer is capable of interacting with fans in the same way fan and footballer have always done. Admittedly there has been some disgraceful behavior by players lately (funnily enough the main stories are coming from a place just down the road from us), but it's hardly anything new. I'm sure plenty of Liddell's mates went down the whorehouse or had affairs, it's just back then you probably didn't own a phone never mind worrying about your voicemail getting hacked or super-injunctions. The money people despise the players for is the same money that ensures we now have top quality pitches that are playable all year round, and if you can't get to the game you can watch it anywhere in the world. Those players in the top leagues mostly earn amounts comparable to bankers and such like but simply crammed into a shorter career span, only they have millions of people watching their every move, dissecting private and professional life 24/7. As of March 2010 The Premier League had average earnings of £28,230 per player per week, or £1.47 million a year. Now given that most players, if they are lucky, will have 8-12 years in the top flight,then we can estimate career earnings for argument's sake. Say we take 10 years -it's easy and quite a fair figure- then that's £14.7million career earnings. A fortune right? We must however factor in that, not accounting for unknown factors, a married footballer will be taxed £712k+ on £1.4m p/y, £18.5k will be taken in NI and the player is left with a net wage of £739k p/y. So over 10 years the average Premier League footballer with a long and healthy career will earn roughly £7.4mil net. If this player is no longer fit enough to play in the PL at say 30+ then given the fact he is likely to be in healthy physical condition and keeps himself that way, he can maybe expect to live until he is at least 60. £7.4mil is now spread over 40 years (10 years playing, 30 years retired). Doing the math, a footballer effectively has £185k per year until he is 60 providing he plays at least 10 years in the Premier League, and earns the average wage for the whole time. Which is a fantastic amount of money of course, but hardly enough to private jet everywhere. Of course there are advertisement deals and stuff on top of this for some players, but even though these guys are at the top of a very big pile of players, have trained for this one thing since they were kids (how many professions do you prepare for from under 14) and have gambled on foregoing qualifications etc to do so, most will have to wipe their arses with plain old bog roll rather than the £20 notes of the caricature footballer. Are footballers overpaid? Debatable. Are most of them earning obscene amounts? I would argue no. Are such wages an inevitable consequence of the improvement and globalization of the biggest sport in the world? Yes. Your thoughts? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...s-not-the-richest-on-the-planet-revealed.html http://www.listentotaxman.com/index.php
Are footballers overpaid? The top ones are most certainly. When you consider what firefighters, soldiers and police officers do and are paid, then the top wages being paid to the top players is a joke. Saying that, offer me £28,230 per week to kick a ball around a pitch, and I'll break your arm to get it.
I think it is a very reasonable debating point and well made. my thoughts are; 1. greed is huge about the sport and those closer to the top seem to be greedier than anyone else. 2. Your point on wages is well made but i think much depends o nthe man himself. Look its as simple as whether yuo beleive they have to survive entirey on thier wages from those 10 years. Its actually so much money (7.4mil net) not including bonuses, business deals etc. that you'd kind of expect a man to invest it wisely. Fowler for example got money off of singing on fees, wages etc but he invested in a property empire type of thing. Are all so lucky? nope. 3. the average guy in the street type of footballer, could we say.... aaron hughes at fulham for example... he gets nearly 30k per week (rounding up) lets just say he plays 10 years i nthe prem, thats an eleite level performance for all ten years. He can still make good moeny in the lovwer divs for another say 5 years? then there's appearances, radio etc to get involved with, coaching etc. ways and means to make more moeny form the game once he finihses basically. 4. I think you're point is ok seeing there so much moeny sloshing baout in football that why not give the reward to the guys making the product. 5. i think the elite guys need to be looked at. ona purely financial basis can manchester city say for example that they could make the moeny back on toure, tevez et al? I don't think so. The ronaldo deal for real was one where they looked at a payback period based on revenues generated and were happy to pay the vast fee and wages on the basis that they, as largest club in the world, could sell image rights etc to make it back. City are certainly not going to do this so 200k per week for yayatoure, tevez and others (thier average wage bill for their 25man squad must be well over 70k per week) is unsustainable and plain wrong really.
Players earn too much, that is obvious. Should they ask for, or accept less. No. Get what you can, you only live once!
I agree. Its waaaay too much but what are they gonna do? say they only want £500 a week? This is just how things are.
You think players here are paid too much? You should see what American Football players are paid in the NFL! At the moment, the NFL team owners are conducting a "lockout" of players, meaning they will literally lock their players out of any of their facilities and not let them in until the players make concessions! Sounds like a fantastic idea to me! http://www.nfllockout.com/
Players are being paid to much, why? We pay too much for PPV - At one point of you wanted to see all of your teams televised games you needed setanta Ireland setanta sports espn and sky, F F S!!!!! We pay too much for replica kits too considering how many are sold, and the price just goes up and up Everything is determined on how much you can squeese out of the punter. Wage caps are not possible and are outside the power of UEFA, they cannot decide how much an employee is paid by his employer. I am finding it hard to believe they can directly interfere in such contract negotiations due to european employment laws, I'll believe it when I see it
Some footballers earn too much,the fact that Wayne Rooney earns more a week than Barack Obama earns in a year is ludicrous.Especially given the fact that unlike Rooney...Barack Obama can read and write.
I know it really flies in the face of getting a good education, just look at most of the losers from big brother that have made cash, all talentless poorly educated idiots but it seems once people know you, you are marketable. World's gone to sheite I fkning hate the word socialite
lol... i think honestly that suppply and demand is one side of the arguement and on the other is pure greed. My opinion is if you sign for 5 years somewhere godforsaken like manchester on 200k per week then you've signe dup for that, you should not be able to weedle another pay day elsewhere just because. IMO the game is too far in favour of the elite guy who seems to be able to do what he wants. Mutu got chased by cheslea in court and all his moeny awarded to cheslea effectively. I'd like to see city sue tevez. I would not want to see them just stick him the the youths for 2 years, thats goign too far the other way.... get me? lets see honest contracts for honest effort and to be frank if that means 200k per week due to his image rights meaning a profit for both parties then fine... city contracts paying 200k per week onthe never never are just plain wrong. mega clubs like real are dodgy enough, uefa can't touch them but city? who gives a dman if they are banned from europe? i think in the end overall club salary caps are simply envitable but it reaises the importnant question on who audits the books.
I totally agree. An oxymoron like David Beckham is a multi millionaire and he's 35 and he hasn't spoken his first two syllable word yet.Its crazy. Tevez has image rights?He looks like Herman Munsters love child. His neckscars show he lost his head Tevez,Tevez. He'll never shag a sexy bird Tevez Tevez The dirty Manc, the ugly ****. They sewed his head on back to front. Carlos Tevez is Herman Munsters son.
If PPV and marketing was around at the advent of football it would be a very different game from today and its true spirit would have never been born
ermmm, surely there's a massive flaw in your reasoning here, retiring at 30. Just because they can't play football any longer at 30 doesn't mean they have the right to retire and happily live off their inflated bank accounts. They can become coaches and pass on their skills to the younger generation, which is what this country despirately need's if we ever want to win a world cup again. Any hard working person nowadays will have to work untill they are 65 maybe even longer why should footballers have the right to laze around for 40-50years, NO!!! they should repay there debt to the community which payed them so handsomely for their services. Also having this coaching work available after they retire from playing will provide them with more money maybe not as much but probably still more than the rest of us. If this was set out as a normal career path for players then they could be paid less and the money saved could be reinvested into letting the retired players develop the players of the future. At the moment the PL makes the most money of all the national leagues yet the country has one of the lowest investment in youth development, Its a discrace!! It's time Big Buisness was taken out of football, Not gonna hold my breath though!!
Yes, players are overpaid. Like someone said about the average wage in the police force etc, its ridiculous. Wayne Rooney makes more in ONE DAY than some people do in one year. He makes more money in a WEEK than some people do in their lives. (Only picked on Wayne Rooney because its the first one that came out of my head, no hatin') But wage is only half the story, what about advertisements? Wayne Rooney as you all may know is a cover star of the popular console game 'FIFA 11' and they earn incredible amounts to just claim they love the game in a one minute video. The thing that annoys alot of people is the fact that footballers have huge mansions, yet we all know unlike most people who buy huge houses thats not all their money. They have money rolling in every week and can afford to do literally whatever they want. Football isn't just a game, its a franchise. For teams like Manchester City its just a case of owners not knowing what to do with their money, Chelsea is Roman's toy, but teams like Real Madrid DO make their money back from the revenue they earn making it worthwhile. Not to mention once they retire they also have the upper hand on coaching jobs. Players with no managerial experience can get a job in League 1/2 but someone who earns all their coaching badges, paying out of their own pocket, working voluntarily for years is not good enough. I understand the experience of being a footballer can help sometimes, but theirs a limit on how much they would know.
Players must know more about coaching football than most people, as they have been coached most of their live's and have skills, knowledge and experience of football.I agree that training is important but there is no reason this training couldn't be payed for by the club's and given to the players over the duration of their careers I mean its not like they haven't got any spare time. This would incourage the players to go into coaching when they retired and would give a chance for the club's to see who could potentially be the best coaches of the future. I think all coaching require's experience(mostly done in the lower leagues), you can't just jump into a top flight job (not these days). Plus I think that good coaching need's to filter down to the very bottom it shouldn't be just about high profile coaching jobs, a kid's team is just as important to the kid's(possible future stars). To me footballer's with their high wage's paid for by the community should feel that it's their responsibility to give something back. IMO high wages for most of them just make's them think they can live the life of luxury with their horse's and their cars. To put it into context if I won the lottery, ok i would quit my job and have more holidays, but i would also start a charity and use some of my wealth, skills and free time to help others, i certainly wouldn't sit on it for the rest of my life, what would you do?
Excellent post, Mr. Nips. Some young players leave their families and don't get the best of educations to provide the service we demand of them in the market place we shop in. They're young lads fired up on physicality with the rewards most people only fantasise about when they're buying their lottery tickets to win a footballer's lifestyle. Frankly, anybody who does the lottery has no right to complain about footballers' wages. I remember the time when footballers had contracts which were unfair and restrictive. They were practically owned by clubs. Better they get the rewards than some faceless shareholder. Bad role models? John Lennon was a smackhead - imagine all the people sharing one needle in a lav! Jimmy Page had sex with an underage groupie. Halle Berry left the scene of a car wreck while drunk. Roman Polanski, Tom Cruise, the NotW, MPs' sex and expenses scandals, blah blah blah role models my arse. Anybody who buys a shirt is feeding the behemoth in the market place, adding to the demand which clubs have to pay big wages to supply, because if they don't somebody else will. Maybe the market will adjust and certainly the FFP could temper wage levels to an extent but I think it's bogus to single out footballers as greedy just because they got the chance - through hard work and dedication because it don't come easy - to have what the vast majority of the population would take quite willingly.
It's a lot easier to say this hypothetically than to actually do it. Also you may feel some sense of guilt about winning the lottery and getting money for nothing, whereas these guys will have turned up every day and 'earned' their money. Many do a lot for charity anyway, our own Jamie Carragher for example has his own foundation. Players don't exactly have their wages paid by 'the community'. As much as anything ti is paid by corporate deals and merchandise sales, they are professionals not some kind of Prince who must placate the peasants to stop them revolting. With regards people saying about the retiring at 30 thing, i was making it simple, and most players do not have a full career in the Prem, so those that have longer are balanced out by those that have less. As for those talking about coaching, the player has to invest time to study for his coaching badges- the UEFA A License is 180 hours, the UEFA Pro license is 240 hours and costs anywhere from 6.5k to 7.5k. So it's hardly a shoe-in for the players to go into coaching. Also there are clearly not enough coaching positions to occupy every player in the league, so you now have a number of people only trained to do one thing that can no longer do that for a living. Expecting them to invest their money wisely is also fairly ridiculous given that they have no business training as they have sacrificed qualifications to have a shot at football.
