Debate: Are Footballers Paid Too Much?

Posted on 26. Jul, 2010 by Dominic Campbell in Debate

I once worked as an apprentice for a Lord Souness, over on Doom Island for a brief spell. After tedious tasks such as cleaning the hypo-thermic generators, wiping down the doomsday device and making cups of tea, my hard work finally paid off. I was sent to training classes in which I would learn how to conquer the earth in 20 days.

However, my dreams of becoming supreme ruler came crashing down when I realised that the class next door was ‘How to save the world in 10…”.

So here we are. Many of us working jobs that pay about as well as a kick in the nuts while footballers get paid ridiculous amounts. In fact, some get more money in half a week, than most of us generate in a year. Just yesterday reports suggested that any club interested in David Ngog’s services, would be put off by his £2M a year wage demands. This then, got me thinking:

Are footballers over-paid, or do they warrant their high salaries?

It’s a recession. That’s what they told me before they made me redundant. It’s crazy to think that England is going through it’s worse financial state in many years, yet football clubs can somehow manage to afford to pay millions in player wages. Ok, so at least the clubs generate their own finances through advertising and ticket sales etc, but so do most companies.

Some would argue that players do indeed earn their money. They have to train up to 4 times a week. They are in and out of the gym and they play a high class of football. They don’t really get holiday and have to work on Bank Holidays as well as missing out on Christmas due to boxing day fixtures. The time they do get to spend with friends and family on special occasions must be slightly boring. They can’t drink, rarely get to party and…

Who am I kidding? If you pay me £90K a week, I would sleep under my desk. The fact of the matter is they are over-paid. What they do, in essence, is meet up with a group of friends a few times a week, have a kick about and go gym. Then, come the weekend they play a football match together.

I pay a membership to go gym. I pay membership fees and match fees, just to be able to play football. I used to play 3 times a week, yet I still had to work 9 – 5.

What really gets me are the mistakes a footballer can make. For example… Let’s compare job roles:

A defender is paid to protect the goalkeeper. His job then, is like the IT departments job, who are paid to stop people hacking into accounts, etc. A defender failing to mark his man which leads to a goal, is like a company account being hacked while the people in IT slept on the job. A mere mortal would expect to be fired for making the same repeated mistakes, yet footballers get paid and go un-punished time and time again.

To say this is footballers in general is a little bias, mainly due to my devotion and knowledge of the sport. The truth of the matter is, all sportsmen are overpaid. They don’t work, they get paid to do their hobby.

The people we have to look at, is the doctors, the nurses, the police and emergency services. They are severely under paid, while a group of ball kickers are paid such high amounts. Something isn’t right.

Perhaps the rest of the sporting world needs to take a look at rugby and the salary cap that prevents crazy wages…

In short. Yes. I think they are paid far, far too much.