Player Salaries

The following is a list of footballers earning £100,000 a week or more extracted from a list of the 50 highest paid football players for 2008/2009, which appeared on  “Futebol Finance” on 5 February 2009:

	Player	Club	Week (£)
1	Zlatan Ibrahimović	Internazionale	166,000
	Ricardo Kaka	AC Milan	166,000
3	Lionel Messi	Barcelona	156,000
4	John Terry	Chelsea	140,000
	Frank Lampard	Chelsea	140,000
6	Thierry Henry	Barcelona	138,000
	Samuel Eto’o	Barcelona	138,000
8	Cristiano Ronaldo	Manchester United	125,000
9	Ronaldinho Gaucho	AC Milan	120,000
	Andrei Shevchenko	AC Milan	120,000
	Michael Ballack	Chelsea	120,000
	Steven Gerrard	Liverpool	120,000
	Rio Ferdinand	Manchester United	120,000
14	Raul Gonzalez	Real Madrid	118,000
	Ruud van Nistelrooy	Real Madrid	118,000
16	Iker Casillas	Real Madrid	110,000
	Frederic Kanouté	Sevilla	110,000
18	Wayne Rooney	Manchester United	110,000
	Michael Owen	Newcastle United	110,000
20	Fabio Cannavaro	Real Madrid	107,000
21	Robinho	Manchester City	105,000
22	Francesco Totti	AS Roma	101,000
	Luca Toni	Bayern Munich	101,000
24	Arjen Robben	Real Madrid	100,000
25	Ashley Cole	Chelsea	100,000
	Deco	Chelsea	100,000
	Fernando Torres	Liverpool	100,000

It includes a note that players in the Premier League have dropped down the list as a result of the fall in the value of the British Pound against the Euro.

It would appear to be the salary contracted to be paid by the club to the player, and I imagine it does not include additional income, such as from endorsements.

Footballers have come a long way since the early days of the Association Footballers’ Union, the precursor to the Professional Footballers’ Association, in the late 19th century:

The Association Footballers’ Union (1898 – 1901) was the name of the first attempt by football players to combine themselves into a union within the United Kingdom.

The Association (‘AFU’) was formed in Liverpool in February, 1898 in response to the proposal of Derby County FC to introduce a maximum wage in professional football in England in September, 1893. Officials at that club suggested that £4 should be the maximum rate paid to a player. At the time some players were earning more than this.

This issue was compounded by a League decision of the same year (1893) to limit the freedom of players, contracted to play for one club, who wished to move to another club. Therefore if a decision was made by a club to limit the earnings of their best players, then their best players could not go to another to earn more if the club for whom they were contracted to play refused to sanction the move.

The highest earning players in the country therefore combined to create the AFU in order to safeguard their interests and to force the League to withdraw the resolution which kept players at clubs until those clubs freed the players from their contracts.

….The reason why that Union failed was due, firstly, to the fact that the players of the day were not all professionals. Whereas they were paid by the clubs to play, the vast majority of players were employed in addition to their role as footballers. ….

The result of this state of affairs was that income earned by players was supplementary to that earned in their working lives. Players earning less than the maximum wage (and who could easily be sacked from their positions with clubs) did not fully back the high earners in the game. As a result the higher earning players found themselves without the required support to push through the movement’s proposed objectives.

The other issue arising from the AFU is that whereas some clubs ignored the proposal of Derby County in order to attract star players, the fact that the players could not leave clubs freely limited their earning powers considerably. …. Therefore the high earners, who were famous and who could bring the necessary publicity and drive to such a movement, soon found themselves in a position where their only option was to either submit to the proposal or go elsewhere and join clubs not affiliated with the Football League.

…. Other notable figures from that first movement journeyed South to play for clubs in the Southern League whose club directors were quite willing to pay the excess salaries for the available talented players. …

The increase in the respective strength of the Southern League and Football League itself is underlined by the fact that Southampton and Tottenham both reached the final of the FA Cup around the turn of the century.  ….

The AFU was a progenitor of the Professional Footballers’ Association in that it created a precedent for footballers to organise themselves into a collective. But it did not last and the Union dissolved itself in 1901.

The balance of power between clubs and players has come a long way since the early 20th century. However, I think it’s gone as far as it can.

With clubs facing a credit crunch, it is inevitable that the balance will start shifting back in favour of the clubs before long.

The market will sort itself out, in the longer term if not in the short term. You don’t need American-style salary caps, or FIFA’s daft 6-5 principle.