13 Jun 2019 00:54:53
"French champions PSG have offered De Ligt a a five-year deal worth 12 million euros (£10.6m) a year. "
Firstly, I know this is just tabloid chatter and may or may not be true.
But the boy is 19 years old and teams probably will offer him something close to that. 50million! I'm of ed001's opinion that he isn't even that great a player either, and what motivation will he ever have to change that?
If PSG signed me tomorrow for 50million (im 27) , i wouldn't care if i sat on the bench or played, i'd retire as soon as the contract was up and enjoy the rest of my life doing whatever I wanted. If I was 19 I'd probably be doing lines of coke off a model on my yacht as soon as training finished.
This world of money is just utterly absurd.
13 Jun 2019 07:50:04
But the thing is SW even if the reports above are true, and yes ED01 didn’t rate him that highly your underestimating a young professional player and suggest he will have no motive to improve! Your thinking from your reality but in their reality and someone who has put all those days as a child wanting to play at the highest level and trained and played from that age to suggest that they will take the money and run, is a bit off the mark. Now I’m not for a second suggesting that the levels of money in the game doesn’t have its caveats but it’s a different age. £100 now feels like a tenner then! So it’s relative. The fury is out on my opinion for him atm but it’s not as if he couldn’t go on to be amazing. He’s still very young.
13 Jun 2019 07:34:23
He looks an extremely promising prospect. There is clearly a shortage of top quality centre backs, hence the huge fee and wages on offer. Good luck to him if he gets the huge deal reported. I very much doubt that this sensible 19 year old will be 'doing lines of coke off a model on a yacht'!
13 Jun 2019 07:37:36
Money in sport is insane, after ed01’s review yesterday where he highlighted Messi earned £100 million in a year I googled “are there any billionaire sportsmanâ€.
Yep there apparently are, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan and soon maybe Floyd Mayweather, how long before a football player joins that club.
On another note I’d personally do a line of giant chocolate buttons off 5 or 6 models! 😂.
13 Jun 2019 09:52:44
Hi G62 - I am against wage controls in general. Don't forget it is relatively few players that earn ridiculously high wages. Of course anyone can get by on £250,000 a year, but that's not an argument for a maximum wage.
Let's take the maximum you suggest, the players would have the following expenses:
1. Agents fees - perhaps an Ed could advise us of the average commission agents charge?
2. Income tax.
3. Pension provisions - I believe players are able to take their pensions from the age of 35 due to the nature of football, i.e earning high amounts when young, but usually retiring in their 30's and possibly having to live off their earnings/ investments for 50 or so years.
4. Housing - in the London area and some of the better areas around major clubs properties are enormously expensive. In my area of Hadley Wood, where Arsenal and Toot players live, detached houses suitable for PL footballers would cost between £2m-5m and higher!
5. Other Insurances, such as insuring against career ending injuries.
6. Lawyers, accountants fees, etc.
So what seems a high income, £250,000 a year, can be spent easily on the above expenses.
I have no problem with top players earning large sums, as they pay tax and employ many people. I am fortunate to have a high income, through hard graft, and I pay large amounts in tax and NI. I employ people in my business, I employ a gardener, I have my cars professionally cleaner, I employ a cleaner, I regularly maintain and update my properties giving work to builders. I utilise the services of Accountants, lawyers, and other professionals. I run cars for my children and help them wherever possible, All this wouldn't be possible on £250,000 a year. Hence I need to earn more and I don't believe people including sportsmen should be restricted in what they earn.
13 Jun 2019 09:58:13
It's funny how people are happy for the players to earn huge sums of money but not happy with ticket prices shirt and other merchandise prices or the cost of their TV sports channels increasing year on year, where do they think the clubs get the money from to pay the players these huge wages, the magic money fairy :-)
People say no its from sponsorship :-) and what's in it for the sponsors then? and who are the sponsors looking to reap their return on investment from?
Ultimately it's the public that pay for everything in football.
13 Jun 2019 10:56:23
Hi RG but surely the agents are only in football because of what they can extract on behalf of their clients?
Maximum wage no need for agents like there never used to be.
As for the pensions I think I covered that by saying a player would be receive his wage over his life time rather than only when he was playing, if a player earned 3k a week then he would receive 3k a week for life ( obviously he'd be able to top us his earnings to a maximum of 5k after he retired from football if 150k a year wasn't enough)
As for living costs in London or anywhere well if no one earned more than £250,000 a year houses prices at the very top would fall dramatically and the most sort after house would fall into line with what the 250k earners were happy to pay for them.
Anyone who wants to earn more than 5k a week is more than welcome to do so as the NHS could seriously do with all the help it can get right now and all those who chose to pay the 99% tax for the good of the country should receive a knighthood ;-) .
Greed really isn't good for anyone mate not even those who are greedy themselves it's a a horrible trait that ultimately destroys the person themselves and unfortunately many more besides, plenty is excellent we all like plenty and luckily for us if no one takes to much then there is plenty left for everyone:-)
Remember
Vote for ME in the November 2019 general election, you know you want to RG :-)
What could possibly go wrong :-)
13 Jun 2019 10:56:56
G62 - You are spot on, it is of course, us the fans that pay. To think that when I was 13, back in 1974, I bought my first season ticket in the East Stand Lower Tier at Highbury for £35 a season! I worked hard to save enough each season to buy it, but it was possible. Unfortunately, ticket prices at The Emirates and other grounds are so high now that the average person can't afford them and the prawn sandwich brigade have taken over. I am shocked how many fans arrive late, miss part of the match to get a half time drink and leave early to avoid the rush for transport, whilst paying a fortune for tickets.
On the positive side nowadays most matches are shown live on TV or have extended highlights the same day, at relatively affordable rates. For those that have difficulty affording satallite tv subscriptions, matches are often shown at pubs, etc.
Another thing that amazes me at out club is how many people pay for season tickets and leave the seat empty at times. In all the seasons I have had season tickets I have never left my seat empty. If I can't go I give my seats to relatives or friends. Mind you I recall watching us play Blackpool, I think it was the 3rd round of the FA Cup in appalling January weather, when it was being shown live on the box. I did regret going, when I could have sat at home in th warm and watched it. I think the result was a 3-0 win, so it wasn't too bad!
13 Jun 2019 11:33:09
Hi again RG yes you are right mate many many fans are out priced from attending matches but worst still a great many are out priced from watching live games too because things like paying rent/ mortgage putting food on the table and shoes on kids feet take preference and for those who live with the choice fuel or food each and every day and onlu get by with the help of food banks despite having a full time jobs even justifying the price of a pint to watch the game can be beyond them.
I'm not suggesting communism because it can't possibly work despite bing a lovely romantic idea but when a 3rd of the world is living in poverty and another 3rd struggling to make ends meet despite working hard I'd say capitalism was every bit as flawed as communism.
As history proves over and over again greed ultimately leads to any empires eventual downfall and football will be no different and eventually the game will need rebuilding from its inevitable downfall, there is always a straw that finally breaks the camels back in anything than involves money and power.
13 Jun 2019 13:17:51
Although i think a salary cap would be a good way of stopping teams from gambling and over extending themselves, such as Leeds did, and if set at the right level, would try and make it a fairer playing field, so Man City or similar could still go out and sign an Mbappe type player with their vast financial backing, but would then have to balance that with more youth team players in the overall squad. However, saying that, football has become the modern day "Raging Bull", where working class boys (OK so not working class in the classic sense, but certainly not part of the university elite) can elevate themselves way above their expected life/ career path purely based on their sporting dedication and ability, and thus end up in the top tier of earners in the country.
A club that is normally an exclusive retreat of the elite and privileged. So who am i to dictate these guys should earn less. They are a small band at the front of a large organisation worth billions, and therefore should be compensated fully for that. I never watch a blockbuster film and think how disgusting it is that the actors were paid millions for a few months work, and so i just can't feel upset that footballers are also reaping the benefit of the current demand for their skill.
13 Jun 2019 18:39:54
It's all supply and demand fellas. The only reason these players are paid the way they are is because there is a demand, from us, to pay to watch it.
Limiting how much an individual can make is immoral imo, but a salary cap would improve parity in the league, and help to fight against the growing divide between larger and smaller clubs.
Ultimately, it won't happen though. The fat cats only care about money.
13 Jun 2019 20:00:24
Is it immoral thought AA mate? Surely it's immoral that some who kicks a ball better than most can earns a salary that dwarfs what a surgeon who has trained for years and who saves many people's lives but also has to mentally cope when they aren't able to earns a fraction of a top footballer does or that Mesut earns 1000 times a week that of a carer who looks after our most vulnerable people.
I personally think we've got something very wrong when bankers and footballers are considered more valuable than people who save life's while we allow children and adults to live in squalid conditions because of absolutely no fault of the own, to me that's immoral mate.
14 Jun 2019 01:11:39
All this talk of beak, economics and society, I thought I was reading a summary of the Tory leadership contest.
Top level players are entertainers. Would 60,000 people watch a surgeon scissor their way through a hair transplant?