And in other news, one million people were forced to use food banks last year, child poverty is rising and the disabled are about to have their benefits cut. Meanwhile, one group of people just gets richer. Footballers.
The Star reports today that Manchester City may end up paying £155m to sign Paul Pogba from Juventus. That’s a £80 million transfer fee, a £10m signing on fee and £250,000 a week for five years. The Mirror reports things differently, saying City will pay £150m up front for Pogba, Liverpool’s England winger Raheem Sterling, 20, and 23-year-old Belgium midfielder Kevin De Bruyne from Wolfsburg. Meanwhile, the Telegraph reports that Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo could join Paris St-Germain for £87m. However, Manchester United’s bid to sign Sergio Ramos from Real for a bargain basement £20m has stalled over the players wage demands. But he’s only asking for a trifling £10m a year. Come on Louis: don’t be so tight!
Actually, it’s not the fault of footballers that they are paid so much money. In fact, they are the last people to blame. It’s the Premier League’s fault, it’s the way clubs are owned and subsidised by rich oligarchs and corporations, it’s satellite TV companies and it’s us, the armchair fans, who pay our subscriptions that drive the whole thing forward.
But put aside the vicious inequalities in our society, let’s go back to football alone and let’s go local. My old club, Bristol Rovers, had a total wage bill last season of £900k. That’s not the wage bill for one player: that’s for all of them. And put it into even more context, Bristol Rovers’ annual wage budget would not cover four weeks wages for Pogba. We are not talking of a football club run by paupers here. Bristol Rovers’ owner Nick Higgs is worth many millions, as are several other board members. By our standards, they are fabulously rich, but in terms of the way the top flight of football is going, relative paupers is what they are.
I grew up believing in the footballing dream, the dream that any club, no matter how small, could make it to the top. No more. Some small clubs, backed by multimillionaires like Dave Whelan at Wigan, can make it but history suggests that the dream does not last forever. The behemoths, with limitless funds, like Chelsea and Manchester City, are simply too wealthy to fail. Even massive clubs like Liverpool cannot seriously compete.
Whilst the Premier League is still attached to the Football League, it’s only for show. Barring the odd catastrophe, we all know at the start of the year who will go down and we know the yo-yo clubs, the bang average clubs in the leagues within the league.
The genie is out of the bottle and it won’t get put back in again. One day, and maybe one day soon, we will see a closed Premier League, quite possibly owned by franchises, possibly accompanied by a European Super League. The money men will never stand still and you can bet your bottom dollar that if they see a way to raking in a few extra billion quid, that’s what they will do.
