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In
a recent BBC documentary in which Lord Alan Sugar (kind of)
tackled the financial problems in football, it was decided that the amount
of money that a footballer earns is the main financial issue for football
clubs. Sides such as Portsmouth (FA Cup
winners in 2008) and West Ham (FA Cup
runners-up in 2006) have both paid out high wages in pursuit of glory and,
while they may have got it in the short-term, with turnover falling, the wages
became too much to bear, with both sides being forced into a change of
ownership and both now plying their trade in the Championship. Both sides have
had to, and continue to, re-build.
To
help pay the wages, clubs increase ticket prices, obtain lucrative sponsorship
deals and, as is common in the modern game, receive vast sums of money (loans)
from rich owners. A top-flight football club’s finances are tentatively
balanced – one kind of income diminishing, or even vanishing, could make one
expense unbearable.
The
increase in wages isn’t exactly a new trend – since 1961 (when the maximum wage
was abolished) the average weekly wage of a footballer has risen from £20 to
£33,868. There are now players earning above £200,000-a-week in the English
Premier League, and it is common for clubs in the top half of the league to pay
even the most average of players at around £60,000-per-week. If wages continue
to rise like this, it surely won’t be too long before we see the first £1
million-a-week player.
Of
course, like transfer
fees, wages don’t indicate a player’s worth; clubs will pay the amount they
are happy to or can afford to pay and players (or rather, agents) will try and
get as much money as they can. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Clearly,
there’s a certain morality issue here but no one can really blame a footballer
for taking more money – or trying to get more money - when it is obviously
available to them.
You
can blame the clubs to a certain extent as, once one club gives a player an
obscene amount of money, other players are going to think they can get that
amount too and, eventually, it all spirals out of control. You could also blame
the people that run the game, be it on a worldwide level or national level, as
they should, for the good of the game, be looking over the club’s shoulder to
check that their finances are up to scratch and can therefore afford these
wages. That’s not their priority – clubs should be able to run themselves
without intervention from FIFA, UEFA or The FA – but it’s not something that
football organisations can just brush away and say ‘it’s not our problem’.
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| 'Not my problem' |
The
trouble is, you can’t just impose a wage cap and be done with it. Players have
mortgages, bills and wives to pay; their lives are structured around their earnings,
just like the rest of the working population. I’m going to assume that
footballers budget, or get someone else to budget for them; I can’t see Wayne
Rooney sitting in front Microsoft Excel on a quiet evening, if I’m honest, but
to take away a large chunk of his income straight away would surely cause him
and his family problems as they struggle to pay for their £2.8
million house and god-knows-how-many cars.
A
wage cap would have to be slowly integrated into the sport. One idea, then,
would be for youngsters entering the sport to only ever earn a certain amount a
week. This would mean that certain players would fall under a wage cap and
others wouldn’t but, as time passes, those that earn obscene amounts will
eventually retire, while clubs could be advised to lower their wages as much as
possible right away.
There
will of course be problems, mainly the fact that there will be quite a large
wage gap, even between players at the same club. But again, by the end of
process, wages would become standardised across the league, or maybe even
across the world – although a system would have to be devised relating to a
league’s income.
Players
could earn more with more years in the game, i.e. experience-related pay, but
even then their wage should be no more than a certain amount. For clarity’s
sake, I’m going to suggest £50,000-a-week as being a ‘reasonable’ wage. It’s
still obscene that a person can earn that much in a week, but I don’t think
many fans would have to much of a problem with that sum when you consider a
top-flight club’s income. And this, of course, could just be a starting block –
the maximum wage could be lowered later on if need be.
People
inside the game, and some outside of it, argue that the clubs have huge incomes
and, because the players are ultimately the people who make them that money
(without the players, there isn’t a football team), they are the ones who
deserve a fair portion of the cash. To a certain extent, that’s true, and I
don’t expect footballers to earn a ‘normal’ wage (although that wouldn’t be
insupportable, would it?), they should just earn a ‘reasonable’ wage.
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| I think it's fair to say that Stephen Ireland has too much money |
And
in any case, the initial income of a football club is sometimes a kind of effect of wages, as prices of tickets
and merchandise rise to help fund the players – lower wages would mean lower
prices, which would equal less money coming in but less money going out. It’s a
vicious circle.
There’s
also an argument to say that there would be a negative impact on the league on
the whole, worsening the appeal of the Premier League both for the players and,
therefore, sponsors. Without wanting to sound too old-fashioned, I think most
fans would rather have players at their club who want to be there instead of
those there purely for the money. Obviously the fact that they’re there purely
for the money isn’t a problem in itself as the player could still work hard and
give his all for the team – it’s when that effort diminishes that there’s an
issue. The point is, a player should want to come to the club because of the
club, not the money on offer. Plus, the appeal of the Premier League seems
pretty insignificant when a club begins to struggle financially or, if the worse
comes to worse, go into administration.
There
are legal issues with a maximum wage – which was the main factor for the
abolishment of the original rule in 1961 – but something, without a doubt,
needs to be done. The plan outlined above isn’t perfect and I’m sure financial
experts (in case you haven’t guessed, I’m not one) will pick the bones out of
it.
But
the current scheme of allowing clubs to pay whatever they want for a player is
extremely flawed, both in a football and morality sense. When a club throws caution
to the wind and pays over-the-odds for players, that is of course their own
fault and most clubs do have their own wage structures to prevent financial
problems.
Yet
still, no one appears to be taking the blame. No one appears to care that
footballers earn more than they deserve and no one is there to help when a
football club ruins itself under the burden of player wages. There maybe isn’t a
perfect solution, but the situation is just going to get worse unless something
is done.
