This headline caught my attention yesterday. “Adrien Rabiot set to return to Italy tomorrow after ‘telling Juventus he is on STRIKE’ in protest against the club cutting £7m of his £28m salary amid the coronavirus crisis – with his mother advising him as his agent” Now as a good European boy he will do as his mum says. Angry mums are let’s face it, mums are a pretty formidable force when angry so worth having on your side. That said it is a brave thing to do in the current climate, go on strike and go public about taking a pay cut. Especially when the numbers are where they are. In percentage terms it is pretty big, but in real terms, let’s examine that. He is taking a 7 million cut, not a shabby amount. None of us are going to complain at being on the receiving end of 7 large. But, and it’s a big but. That leaves mummies little soldier having to get by on 21 million!
Now call me old fashioned but even a tweed addicted lay about an get by on 21 million a year. This highlights the madness that football is in the modern world. Players in the so called ‘working mens’ game are on 200k plus per week and more. The very people the game is aimed at are the first to be priced out of a season ticket. The ‘cheaper’ alternative is to be mugged by the army of broadcasters offering annual packages at a price of what an old style season ticket used to cost! When this is over, and it will be at some stage, football must retune to reality FM. The source of overseas billionaires available to come and bankroll clubs is going to be under threat. Many of the people who have to buy the tv packages will be in a different place financially for some time. Those sports packages are a luxury item that will have to go in many household budgets.
The flowing money tap in football is reducing to a trickle again and hopefully in turn some sanity to the madness that the finances of football represent.
Photo by Connor Coyne on Unsplash
5 responses
Well maybe, just maybe, football will end up having to change, just like seemingly everything else will have to – apart from most people’s piss-poor attitudes, which will sadly never change until the end of time.
The football I enjoy watching most of all is actually re-runs old matches from the seventies and I think the BBC ‘Match of the Day’ team have actually missed a trick of late, what with Lineker’s podcasts, usually featuring the views of Messrs Shearer & Wrighty naming their ‘Top 10’ players to have scored a goal with their arse. Jeez, give me a break.
Just play me some OLD ‘Match of the Day’ programmes that Jimmy ‘The Chin’ used to introduce.
That’d do very nicely indeed.
I love looking through a post that can make people think. Also, many thanks for permitting me to comment!
Very good article. I’m experiencing many of these issues as well..
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An impressive share! I have just forwarded this onto a co-worker who had been conducting a little homework on this. And he in fact ordered me breakfast because I stumbled upon it for him… lol. So let me reword this…. Thank YOU for the meal!! But yeah, thanx for spending time to discuss this issue here on your blog.