Has the expense for football players become out of control?
Yes is the answer to that almost immediately. Two words I could use to describe the colossal amount of money spent and used on players is ‘beyond ridiculous’. Football is potentially the most entertaining sport on the planet, and the performers involved are undoubtedly very skilled people who are extremely talented. But does this talent and entertainment really entail them to earn silly amounts of money per week? I think not. Many will probably argue that the money they earn is deserved because of the service they offer to the public, or because of the spirit and togetherness they create between fans and supporters. But how anyone can possibly say that the expenses involved within football hasn’t got out of hand is beyond me. It’s becoming a joke.
This time 11 years ago in 2000, Roy Keane of Manchester United broke the £50,000 a week barrier with £52,000. Nowadays, £150,000’s worth of weekly wages seems like a regular amount of money. Teams like Manchester City, Chelsea, Real Madrid and Barcelona are suspect to top the charts of the highest wages, but for me the money they are prepared to spend on one player just to keep them happy to stay at the club is preposterous. Players like Messi and Tevez are stunning players. They own huge amounts of skill, and you can tell they are passionate about the game they play. Each is on roughly £250,000 a week. That’s £1 million per month, and yes you’ve heard me right, £1 million. Fireman, policemen and soldiers, who all lead dangerous careers that often requires them to put their lives at risk, earn roughly £30,000 a year. To earn a total of £1 million it would take them 20 years or more. For a football player, a little over one month is what it takes to earn that money. Riddle me that.
I respect that clubs are now richer because of their shareholders and owners and therefore have the money to comfortably pay their expensive players. But why would anyone want to pay such a ludicrous amount of money for one player? I read in the paper the other day that just to guarantee Tevez stays with Manchester City, their owners were willing to raise his wages by a whole £40,000 a week to tempt him into staying. So rather than paying him to play, they’re more paying him to stay. Being a passionate football fan and player myself, I like nothing more than seeing top quality like players like Tevez and Terry battling it out against each other to win games, so coming from me this may sound weird. But unlike some people I sometimes take a minute to think that a player making one successful pass had just earned him £10,000.
Barcelona recently became the highest paying club as well. Naturally I had to divulge into how much exactly they were spending on their players each week. Prepare yourselves readers. Each week, Barcelona splash out an unthinkable £4.94 million on their stars. That’s an average of roughly £95,000 per player. Once again I’ll reiterate that that’s £5 million coming out of Barcelonas’ owners back pockets each and every week.
I’d absolutely love to earn that amount of money, I think anyone would. But because I’m not, I’ve looked at it more in depth and considered how outrageous it is becoming. It’s not just the shareholders faults mind you. It seems to be that players are more than willing to sit on the bench each and every game just to earn a shed load of money. While the money sounds great, I’m not sure if I’d fancy sitting on the bench just watching despite my love for the game. My opinion may change if I’m ever lucky enough to experience the sheer amount of money, but until then I’m adamant in my belief that football is changing for the worse because of the monumental sums of money earnt by the performers of this footballing era.
