I am deeply shocked to learn today that Spurs exciting young midfield player, Dele Alli (19), earns a mere £10,000 a week. That is barely more than half a million quid a year. Manchester City’s Yaya Toure earns that every two weeks. How can the poor lad possibly cope?
The London Evening Standard said, so it must be true, that Alli is likely to receive a pay rise of some 100%, which will take the youngster over the £1m a year salary bracket, keeping him as a mere pauper in terms of his pals in the England team like Raheem Sterling who trouser enough per annum to buy a small island, while still leaving enough for a fleet of expensive motorcars.
Now I don’t know about you, but I look at three weeks of Alli’s wages as being a large fortune. £30k would be utterly life-changing for me, but for a footballer in the top flight, it’s peanuts.
I am not saying that footballers should not be well rewarded for what they do, but I remember a time when footballers lived in the same kind of streets and went to the same kind of shops as the rest of us. Some of them even had mortgages and then, when their careers were over, were forced to seek alternative employment. Many took over pubs, others just drank in them. Now, when a player hangs up his boots, after a relatively short career, he will never need to work again at anything.
I doubt that many Premier League players “earn” less than £20k a week so it is safe to assume that even the workaday journeymen at the lower clubs are still paid in millions and it is ironic that these millions are paid by supporters either through extortionate ticket prices and/or subscriptions to Mr Murdoch and British Telecom. It’s Robin Hood in reverse. Take from the poor and hand it all to the rich.
If I could not imagine a weekly wage of £10,000, then what on earth would I do if I landed a lucrative contract with Manchester City? I recognise that this is a somewhat remote possibility, but I could be looking at earning something like £13m a year. People talk about players being hungry, but how would you ever be hungry again if your bank account bulged with money like that?
And even this represents peanuts compared to what is coming next season. It will not just be the likes of Toure who will be coining in the millions when the new Sky Sports deal kicks in and soon, mark my words, a player will take home £1m a week.
I am having serious trouble justifying my outlay on Mr Murdoch’s TV channels, in terms of finance and conscience and a football league, like the Premier League, which has all but destroyed the dreams of lower league clubs by shifting the vast bulk of the cash to the upper echelons.
And I too am losing my marbles when I see what Dele Ali is currently earning and think to myself, “Is that all?”
