Footballers don’t need more than 200k a year…

I was listening to an ex-player pundit talking about footballers’ wages and saying that if you were 'only' on £100k per week, so why wouldn’t you move to a club which paid £300k?

It did not seem to occur to him that perhaps, just perhaps, earning £5million per year was simply more than enough and earning £15 or £30million held no additional attraction, simply because enough is enough.

"He’s got to look after his family," the ex-player said by way of justification, as though £5million per year wouldn’t do that. On a phone-in, a fan was complaining that his club’s best players were "only" on about thirty grand a week and that showed the club’s "lack of ambition" to attract good players; as though £30k was chump change.

 I’m not sure how it has happened, but it seems that we’ve totally lost perspective on the value of money when it comes to football. Astronomical wages have become so normalised. Average pay in the Premier League is about £200,000 per month, £2.5million per year. Obviously many are on £400,000 - £1.5million per month.

Back in the real world, for perspective, in the UK our average wage is about £27k per year, with millions on far less; 40% of people who live in Stoke, for example, exist on about £16,000 or less per year. The majority of Teessiders live off under £20k.

For a bit more perspective, if you fall ill and have to go to hospital, when you are being looked after by a nurse, when they are caring for you when you are at your most vulnerable, when they may be helping you stay alive, how does it make you feel that they will likely be earning in a whole year what Alexis Sanchez earns in eight hours?

 Go on, don’t shy away from this, don’t swallow it down and look away. How does it really make you feel? Tell me it’s right that a nurse earns in a year what Sanchez earns in eight hours. Go on, tell me it’s right. Go on…you can’t, can you? Of course you can't. That’s because you’re a decent person with standards. And that’s because it isn’t right. That’s because it is very, very wrong. You know it, I know it, we all know it.

We must ask and answer such questions. Not doing so has allowed football to indulge extreme greed without censure or discipline from the very people for whom the game is played. Us.

And just a little bit more perspective still. God forbid you need the services of a neurosurgeon to operate on your brain, but if you do, they will likely earn about £100k per year. They will drill through your skull and with mastery of science and biology, they will operate on your grey matter and make you better. And for all that responsibility, learning and knowledge, they will earn in a year what Aaron Ramsey will earn at Juventus in less than two days. Even the highest paid neurosurgeon will get less in a year than the Welshman does in a week. So tell me honestly, how does that make you feel about football? Tell me this disparity is right. Tell me this is the best of all worlds where a footballer earns more in a week than a neurosurgeon does in a year. Tell me it’s right. You can’t, can you? Of course you can’t. That’s because it is wrong on every level, you know it, I know it, we all know it. We shouldn’t be shy to say that.

Given this reality, it’s no wonder that we see football entirely through the prism of money. How could we not, even though we don’t want to. It has stained the sport. We can’t get beyond it. The daily discourse of the game gnaws at it like a dog with an overpriced bone. It is at the core of all our discontent. We are constantly trying to assess player commitment versus income. Fees paid against performance. "It’s all about money these days," is one of the most common and sad refrains from fans. It’s actually depressing. Worse still, our discontent at this state of affairs is totally ignored by the industry, as though it is ungracious or mean of us to protest, and not actually a well-reasoned moral objection and a feeling that it has spoilt the game in some deep, profound way and embeds profound financial unfairness at the heart of our lives.

How do they get away with it? Well, defenders of the steroidal wage levels will try and tell you it is just like the movies or music business, where stars earn big money, as though that might justify it (it wouldn’t). But this is a totally spurious comparison. No-one is paid £2.5million in wages per year just for being, say, a singer and songwriter. You earn a royalty. Not a wage. Nothing is fixed. Your remuneration is directly related to sales. If you’re injured, you don’t get paid. If you’re off form and write a song that no-one wants to buy, you don’t get paid.

 If you’re a movie star, you get a fee for being in the film, not a guaranteed wage for five years. If you’re injured and can’t act, you don’t keep being paid the same money year after year. If you’re terrible in the film, you don’t get the same money for the next five years worth of films, regardless of how bad you are, or how poorly the movie performs.

But in football, you absolutely do.

Alexis Sanchez (an obviously exceptionally egregious example, I grant you) has earned over £18million in the last year, has played in 20-odd games and scored three goals. When he’s played he’s been largely poor and contributed little. It happens in football. But it has not affected his income at all. So football isn’t the music or movie business.

Oh, well, it’s a short career, so they have to make hay while the sun shines, defenders of big money will also tell you. No it’s not. Your career is likely to be 15 or 20 years long. You or I will almost certainly not have the same job in any other industry for 20 years these days. Only in football is it even vaguely commonplace.

And anyway, they don’t stop being able to earn a living once they’ve stopped playing football. Why are footballers uniquely supposed to retire for life at 36 with enough money in their vaults to last the next 60 years without lifting a finger? Go and get a job. And of course, many do and thus disprove another of the flabby excuses for footballers' crazy wages.

But the rich footballer must pay a lot of tax, you might argue. The top 1% earners pay about 28% of all tax taken in the UK. Thus without rich people like footballers, where would all the money come from to pay for state spending? But in a more fair ,equitable society, the gap between rich and poor wouldn’t be so wide, so that the poor who now pay little or no tax because they’re sodding skint and working on a zero hours contract for minimum wage, actually have money and pay their share. And I’ve yet to meet anyone who is earning 20 or 30 grand who has a tax avoidance scheme or offshore investments to reduce their tax bill. But have never met a rich person who doesn’t.

Yeah, but we’re all hypocrites because we’d all take the money, right? That’s always the final get-out clause for those seeking to defend this outrageous financial situation, trying to paint us as hypocrites. But I’m here to tell you, if I was earning a typical football wage, I’d have to give away almost all of it. Give me three grand a week, 150k per year. That is plenty for one person to live off, isn’t it?

This isn’t some sort of attempt to paint myself as especially hair-shirted. I like having some financial velvet between my vertebrae as much as anyone. I just genuinely don’t know what the hell I’d do with all the cash.

Even allowing for a few extravagances - I have no idea what, but let’s assume I can find some - I don’t see how it’d be possible to spend even the £150k per year, so what in God’s name would you do with 1, 2, 5, 10 or 20 million per year for the next three or four years?

Once we put these numbers into our own lives, it helps us understand them more. When they’re isolated in a football context, they lose their real meaning. That’s maybe why we talk about them so lightly.

As I say, I don’t think we should be afraid of saying that we are opposed to such wealth and by extension to the system that facilitates such payments. After all, most of the world’s great religions are opposed to it too. You cannot serve both God and Mammon.

Obviously, footballers have quite innocently fallen ass backwards into this wealth. Most would play for minimum wage, if minimum wage was all that was on offer. And I’m fully aware that many do use their income for the greater good because they’re obviously decent people. Equally, many fritter it away. But is this really how we want society to be? Do we really want to rely on the mood and largesse of the wealthy few to trickle down, in order to make the lives of the poor and deprived better?

 And here’s an important additional consideration; a lot of research has been done into wealth and being rich doesn’t make people happier. So why are we endorsing an industry which ‘rewards’ people with so much? One report found that earning between £43,478 and £54,347 per year led to 'emotional well-being'. I like the sound of emotional well-being. We could all use some of that. 

But once you get over that £54k, the money stops working and you will never be any more happy or content. And surely happiness and contentment is all any of us want out of life.

Indeed, there is some research that suggests the richer people become, for many there is a commensurate dropping-off of contentment and an increase in negative feelings. People worry intensely that they might lose their wealth, they worry people only want to know them because of their wealth. They want respect for being wealthy but once you judge your own worth by your wealth, there is always somebody with more than you, always someone with a bigger house, a bigger car, a bigger bank balance. And by your own standards, therefore, you are inferior to them. You are, in fact, the loser. That’s the self-induced psychological taunt.

So how much should a top footballer be paid then? In 1980 in UK, it’s been said that only eight players earned £50,000 per year. They entertained us every bit as much as anyone does today. In today’s money that’s about £220,000 per year, not per week. That doesn’t seem unfair pay for a top player, does it? Even though it won’t make them any happier than earning about 50 grand a year.

By earning about ten times the average wage, it recognises that you are the creme-de-la-creme of your profession. It’ll put you in the top 1% of earners in the country and you’ll have plenty left over to grease the palms of friends and family. Tell me why that wouldn’t be enough? You can’t. That’s because it is more than enough.

 If clubs cut wages by up to 90%, all other things being equal, they could spend the dividend this would release in the club’s community, improving the lives of us all, spreading love and support instead of making rich people even more rich, whilst simultaneously condemning the rest of us to live lives that are far more impoverished than they need be. We are, after all, human too. Just like rich footballers.

But that’s not going to happen yet, obviously.

The only way it will happen is if income into clubs drops markedly and they have to pay players more responsibly in order to survive. And as we discussed in the last three weeks, that is not a totally fantastical scenario and is certainly one we should seek to pursue.

While it will take a complete overhaul of the economics, culture and even morality of football and more widely of society to enact change, those of us who feel that there is something badly wrong with a sport which pays its performers so much, should take every opportunity to say so. If we don’t, those who perpetuate this normalised extremism will think we approve, or that those of us who disapprove are merely jealous. We are not.

 We should hold players, managers and agents to account. Make this sort of wealth uncomfortable for those who own it and even more so for those who dispense it. We should support the idea of a maximum wage and we need to be asking players exactly how much f***ing money do you really need, man?

And the answer is, much, much, much less.

You know it, I know it, and y’know what? I bet even they know it too. 

Source - Football365