I was having a look through some of my old
tweets and I found something my cousin posted about how unfair the pay checks
of footballers are. I think we’ve all wondered this at some point. Why are
football players racking up the millions, whereas the real ‘heroes’, the firemen,
doctors, etc. are making scraps compared to them? In terms of ‘football players’,
I’m talking the top players of first division football. Your average player of
Brighton and Hove Albion FC makes nowhere near the millions the big names make,
names such as Wayne Rooney and Christiano Ronaldo who earn a yearly salary of £27
million between them[1].
Do bear in mind though, not all players get paid this much. It really is the
top of the top.
The way I look at it is this. In the hierarchy
of clubs, you’ve got the players, the managers and the club owners. Let’s take
the football club Chelsea FC, owned by Roman Abramovich and managed by José
Mourinho. Abramovich has owned Chelsea FC since 2003. He’s where the money
comes from, and he’s got a lot of it. When you’ve got that much money, you own
a football club for fun and publicity. Once the English Premier League formed
in 1992, English football suddenly became the million dollar sport it is today. It created a league of competitive football which got the fans on board, and allowed the sport to blossom into what it is today.
Last Christmas my dad took my brother and I
up to Chelsea to watch a game. My whole family supports Chelsea, so we go every
time we’re back in the UK to watch them. This time however, we splashed out and
bought tickets for a tour of the stadium too. The tour of the stadium included
meeting three classic Chelsea players, the two that are important to this story
are Ron Harris and Peter Bonetti. After taking some photos with fans, they wrapped
up with a question and answer session. I stuck my hand up and on the last
question I was pointed to. My question was ‘in your opinion, what’s the hardest
thing about being a professional football player?’, a pretty simple question,
but the answer I got really surprised me.
Ron Harris explained the key differences
between modern day football and the ‘60s and ‘70’s football they played in. He
said that modern day footballers were more like celebrities with football on
top. Peter Bonetti then added that in his time they weren’t paid in millions;
even the best of the best weren’t international celebrities. Ron Harris then
went on to ask ‘well, have you ever met any of your favourite players?’. He
made a good point. Of course I never expected to, but all the times I’ve ever
seen Chelsea play I’ve never come closer than 100 metres to them. My dad really
topped it off the point as we were leaving the room. Believe me when I say the
guys we met are Chelsea legends, yet my dad pointed out they still have to go
to talk to fans at stadium tours. There may be some line between whether they’re
doing it out of loyalty to the club or as an income, but it certainly does
highlight football wasn’t always like it is now.
Back to the point. The point is that the
owners of the clubs are the top dogs. They have the money. When they’ve
invested so much in a club, they don’t want to lose that money. It also doesn’t
look so good for them if their club loses. With their money they aim to attract
the best players they can. Why would a player of first division standard stay
in the third? They wouldn’t. They’d work their way up the league tables to
wherever their highest offer was. So a club sees a talented player, they want
him, how do they get him? Offer a big buying price to the club and a big salary
to the player. Simple. If a club wants a player bad, they’d offer him a bigger
and bigger salary. It stands to reason the better the player the higher their salary.
That’s why the big players get paid so much, everybody wants them.
So in short, that’s the way I see it. It’s
not right morally but yes, that’s why they get paid so much.
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