Are footballers paid too much?

In this article I will be reviewing the highly debated question. Are football players paid too much? In this we taking apart the stereo typical player that you see on the television and we will talk about players as a whole.

The average household income of a working family is around 30,000 a year. An average premier league player earns 22,500 a week. But does a regular family arrive at work at 6am and come home at 7pm to do a job they have been committed to since their early teens? Some possibly. Top flight footballers often talk of the sacrifices they made to become a footballer in the modern day with everything from your diet, and how much time you spend in front of the TV being controlled by a contract. Last year Rooney was dropped from the Manchester united team and given a 250k fine after taking his wife out to celebrate New Year. Would you do this job if you were paid 30,000 a year?

Money is a crucial part of the game today with big money transfers such as Gareth bale to real Madrid costing 85 million. With this kind of money that these teams have you can buy the most skilful players in the world which can create brilliant football to watch. However some people believe that money is ruining the game. Michael Johnson was a bright prospect at the age of 18 with all the major clubs keeping an eye on him. He signed his first contract which was at 40,000 a week which during this period was a very high amount. Being such young player with so much going on he was becoming a huge celebrity with a lot of money, this sadly got to him and he was released from his contract in 2012, he is still only 25. He traded the talent for the limelight. He is not the only player to fall of the tracks once money plays a part.

In this country the average GP earn between £54,319 to £81,969 a year. These people are saving people's lives by making sure they get the correct care as quickly as possible. Yet footballers make all this money for kicking a ball about.   

During the time I was writing this I asked several people if they would accept 200k a week for doing their job exactly the same, but there are more restrictions; diet, and time on breaks, holiday and not being able to go out. The majority said they would take it. I asked them why and they simply said because of the money. One person said though that it would ruin her morality, the fact that she would have just got there. With no work. And maybe that’s why money ruins football? Because they lose their sense of moral grounds.

This shows that the money isn’t just affecting the game with these super teams. This now means that teams like man city will win the premier league every year. It affects a player on a personal level, and as the secret footballer said - it ruined his childhood game.

You often see people arguing that nurses and fire-fighters deserve more money. Yet I see no attempt by these people to buy these heroes shoes. We are a product of society. We rebel yet really, we buy into it. When you go into the sports store and you buy a pair of shoes or you buy some boots which you say are of the best quality but really, you’re buying the face behind it, and the tick upon it. we all think that we are one of a kind and maybe if we stopped showing these people the attention by paying for sky sports every month and buying all the latest gear you saw some star, then there would no longer be a business for football and it would soon go back to the first 11 of the team being from the local catchment area. But you don't want that, you want to talk to your friends about what Rooney did to that referee last week and then got a red card.

Football clubs no longer have the ability to stem from nothing and make their way up, money has taken that away, 60 years ago you could connect Chepstow town with Manchester united. The players would have been from the local catchment and would have been part of the team from a very young age. Now the difference is huge. The whole money argument can be proven by Bristol city; 6 years ago they found a new investor who put money into the club. Those rose leagues quickly. They made it to the final of the championship playoff where they were beaten by hull. After 3 consecutive seasons of finishing quite highly the investor decided to take his money elsewhere. Bristol city are now bottom of league one with it very likely for them to be relegated. There players are being paid less due to lack of funds which has seen almost the entire first 11 change team. The player’s wages soon become affected so the players go elsewhere to make an earning where they will be playing in a high league whilst making more money.

These players make so much money it’s not about whether it was your childhood club anymore. The only thing that matters in football is that you get your pay check at the end of the month and hope that has quite a few zeros at the end.

Though saying that entire player have fairly short careers that often end in their early 30’s with the constant fear that the next tackle could be the end of your career. The majority of football player don’t have 250,000 + pay checks every week. In league 2 the average pay per week is £747, which is not far of the national daily wage at £470. This means they earn around 38,844 a year. This is a similar pay to the rest of footballers across the globe. It’s only the minority of exceptionally talented players that will earn a ridiculous amount of money.

So is a football player paid too much? Some are of course. But the majority earn just above the average house hold. But is the pay of footballers even a question of football anymore? It’s a question of do celebrities get paid too much?

When typing Rooney into Google images this is an instant return. This shows the power of the   media, he is no longer a sign of goal scoring or being the next great player. He is Nike. He is an advertisement that you see running around with a bunch other adverts every Saturday. Though you may think that we detract people from watching football it still has an essence of beauty such as the Arsenal goal vs. Norwich which is going down as one of the best team goals ever scored.

This source shows the increase of money being pumped into the game and the rate in which it is coming in. where is this money coming from? Well with the recent purchase of the FA cup by Bskyb for £3.4 billion you have to ask, where is the money going? And the answer is football has a vicious cycle. The money will go into the matches and the occasion. But you don’t need £3.4 billion to run the cup. So eventually this money finds its way into the player’s pocket. You may ask, is £3.4 billion a little over the top but it due to public demand. This statistic shows that the influx of business into the premier league has increased over the past 10 years have sports broadcasters have gotten better. So who’s to blame? Well, us. These big companies would not benefit without us purchasing their product?

As a conclusion I feel, and I hope you feel that top flight players playing in the top teams are being paid way too much. But I feel footballers in general don’t get paid too much. You may say they don’t deserve as much as a doctor or even a nurse. But then again, a few thousand people don’t come to watch you work every week. So for top flight players they are paid too much. I hope you have seen both sides of the story and evaluated all perspectives.