Money and football - it's back to business

Picture: adidas

48 hours ago we were celebrating the closest thing modern professional football has come to altruism - the "fairy tale" (© all newspapers) of Leicester City winning the Barclays Premier League. The common view has been that Leicester, unlike the footballing behemoths they beat to the title, did so on modest funding and a humble team ethic that reflects their genial manager, Claudio Ranieri (best not, though, dwell on events at the end of last season at Leicester and that video...).

We shouldn't too carried away. Leicester don't - and weren't, going into this season - exactly represent a rags-to-riches story. The media may have painted their victory as some sort of David-and-Goliath mismatch, but we're hardly talking about part-time postal workers and milkmen taking on the elite. Certainly the Leicester players will have increased their personal values with this season's unlikely, odds-shattering title win, and no doubt some will progress from millionaire status to multi-millionaires. And that's when the trouble will start.

The Premier League - and the incredible money Sky and other television deals pump into it - has been with us now for 24 years. In that time we have seen the car parks of clubs ostentatiously transformed by the sight of de rigeur Ferraris, Porsches, Range Rovers, Lamborghinis and other symbols of the ridiculous wealth bestowed on young men barely out of school-leaving age. On Instagram we see pictures of their homes, their minor palaces in Oxshott, Weybridge, Wilmslow and Alderley Edge. On social media, commentary of Monday night's party at Jamie Vardy's house has focused as much on the opulent chandelier hanging in his kitchen as the team spirit demonstrated by the Leicester players watching the Chelsea and Tottenham draw.

We are quick to judge: how often have I heard and read people complaining about Chelsea's players this season doing very little to justify the incredible salaries they're paid. But there is justification to it. After all, whether we pay exorbitantly for season tickets (as I do) or we buy the products advertised on the television channels that are paying to show the games, we're paying for all this.

It's a touchy subject. Good, then, of Manchester United's Juan Mata to admit in a Spanish TV intervew that his £150,000-a-week wages are "obscene". Mata is one of the most likeable and intelligent figures in the game. Rather than spending his spare time on the golf course, in card schools or chasing women who are not married to him around nightclubs, he has, since his arrival in England, demonstrated a cultured side to the professional footballer, engaging in his new surroundings and frequently writing eloquently about them on his highly readable weekly blog One Hour Behind. He is also an extremely gifted midfielder - I would still love to see him back at Stamford Bridge - but also one who has been able to burst out of the footballing bubble to view it for what it is.

"With respect to the rest of society, we earn a ridiculous amount," Mata said in the interview with the Spanish programme Salvados. "I'd happily take a pay cut if there was less business involvement in the sport. Football is very well remunerated at this level. It's like we live in a bubble. Compared to the rest of society, we earn a ridiculous amount. It's unfathomable. With regard to the world of football, I earn a normal wage but compared to 99.9 per cent of Spain and the rest of the world, I earn an obscene amount."

Mata said he could sympathise with spectators growing jaded with their clubs, especially if the cost of watching doesn't match the performance delivered by the teams themselves. "I can understand what they're talking about," he told Salvados. "The business side of football makes it seem as though the owners are now more important than the fans. It's not like the football of old; there wasn't as much press coverage before," adding, somewhat tellingly: "or as many interested parties looking for their cut."

"Every player thinks he's Maradona when he joins a big club," Mata went on. "That happens to all of us but then you start to notice it in the younger players. You see kids who think they're rock stars, wearing extravagant clothes and driving fancy cars... and sometimes you have to take them aside and have a word."

Perhaps Mata's wisdom should be imparted to Dominic Solanke, the 18-year-old Chelsea youth team striker who has been on loan this season at Vitesse Arnhem. Solanke has demanded a pay rise to take his earnings from £7,000 per week to £50,000, almost double the average annual salary in the UK - and he's still an Under-21 player yet to break into the first team (much like many of his academy peers at Chelsea).

Understandably, Solanke's demands have been met with outrage. Chelsea, however, may have to consider that they have brought it on themselves, with a reputation for paying high salaries. In the current Chelsea first team, 22-year-old goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois is on £120,000 a week, Cesc Fàbregas is on £156,000, Diego Costa £185,000 and Eden Hazard a whopping £200,000. Even Radamel Falcao is trousering £140,000 a week in his loan deal from Monaco, and no one has seen or heard from him since he came to Stamford Bridge.

According to The Times today, Chelsea are going to stand firm on Solanke's outrageous claim, threatening to demote him to the academy squad unless he adopts a more realistic view of his worth at this stage of his career. The paper claims that Chelsea want to set an example, so that their younger talents don't let money cloud their development as players. It's an admirable approach. Young football players should continue the traditions of apprenticeship, and not simply see their senior peers - some of whom are barely much older - cruising about in exotic cars and expecting to enjoy the same trappings of success so immediately.

We will never escape the vulgarity of money in football. Few fans will have a problem with their favourite players showing off their wealth, as long as they deliver on the investment we all make in them by performing to the best of their ability on the pitch. The clubs, though, have a responsibility. The relationship between them and us fans can only stretch so far.

On top of ticket price hikes, there have been stealthy increases in the subscription costs of the TV companies who cover the games (on top of the advertising revenues that ultimately we pay for). And there are all the other things that make being a football fan a wallet-shredding ordeal: yesterday Chelsea unveiled its new 2016-2017 home kit - not exactly the best design I've ever seen from adidas, coming somewhere between a silk nightie and children's pyjamas, and advertised by a particularly thuggish-looking Diego Costa - for which you could end up paying more than £105 for the full-replica adult shirt with the name of your favourite player on the back. Add another £5 if you also want the official Premier League badge on the sleeve. "Absolute madness. Pure greed," tweeted Stan Collymore.

I may not be an expert on sports clothing but I can hardly imagine that a shirt, no doubt made in a Far East, low-wage country, will have a bill-of-materials that adds up to that sort of money, not even a shirt with adidas' proprietary "Adi Zero" technology, whatever that is. One can only hazard a guess at what the profit margin is on the shirt - even more if you consider that you'd also be advertising Yokohama tyres in the process of wearing it, seeing as they paid Chelsea £200 million to be on the front.

Whether you're a fan, a club or a player, football is an expensive business. And you don't always get out of it what you put in. A matchday ticket in the Premier League this season averages £30.68 (for reference, Chelsea's range from £52-87), with season ticket prices averaging at £513.95 for the cheapest and £886.21 in the more expensive categories (and remember, that's average). We Chelsea fans pay some of the highest season ticket prices in the league: £750 for the cheapest, £1250 for the most expensive. And the 18 - yes, just 18 - home league games our tickets have entitled us to haven't exactly given much joy this term.

Which brings me back to Leicester City. They may be owned by a Thai billionaire, but they have achieved their remarkable success this season with equally remarkable modesty. On August 8, the opening day of the season, the entire Leicester squad represented a total outlay of £45 million.

Compare this with the investments of the teams who'll end the season below Leicester: Raheem Stirling alone cost Manchester City £49 million, out of a total spend of £153.50 million. And all that got them was fourth place in the Premier League and a Champions League semi-final. For comparison,  Manchester United spent £108 million and lie fifth while Chelsea spent £66 million - in defence of the 2015 title - and are currently ninth. Interestingly, Arsenal's spend was just £10 million and they're now third. Tottenham shelled out £66 million, but their net spend was only £5.7 million, and they're second. Make of all that, what you will.

Of course, we all accept - reluctantly - that the money in football will never return to something more sensible. The argument about how much a footballer earns versus how much a nurse earns may have its merits, but it is ultimately a pointless exercise, no more so than trying to work out how Tom Cruise earns $25 million per film. It is clearly nuts that football salaries in countries like Italy and Spain are in complete disproportion to the social struggles and high unemployment these proud and passionate footballing nations are currently struggling with.

We know it's all about market forces. We know that if a Chelsea won't stump up the wages, a Real Madrid or a Juventus will. But it would be nice, for once, for our football clubs to stop taking us fans for a ride, and behaving with a little less greed and a lot more modesty. Then we might start buying those shirts again.