Put it in the box

January is upon us again, and the scramble for new players is just hotting up. Desperate clubs search for that magic ingredient, Rafa does his usual trick of buying rubbish and selling at a loss, and the more entertaining players poke their heads over their neighbours’ walls in wide-eyed hopefulness looking for a lucrative contract at one of the clubs that is currently throwing the money around like torn-up betting slips.

According to an article published by the BBC Business News section on May 28th last year, Chelsea paid out £132.8 million in wages in the 2006-7 season, United paid £92.3 million, Arsenal £89.7 million, Liverpool £77.6 million and Newcastle £62.4 million. With Premier League clubs now paying over £1 billion in salaries, the average wage is around £50,000 a week (based on twenty clubs employing a squad of twenty players for fifty-two weeks).

It is difficult to pinpoint exact figures for each club – for obvious reasons the clubs prefer to be vague – but if the leading daily newspapers are to be trusted we can put a price on the talents of individuals. Apparently John Terry earns £130,000 a week, Steven Gerrard (who is eager to see quotas controlling the number of foreign players but stays surprisingly silent on the subject of salary capping) earns £120,000 a week, Cristiano Ronaldo around the same, with Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney lagging behind on around £100,000 a week.

Any sympathy for these players, based on the fact that they are paid salaries widely accepted in the sector, fades away when you look at the shelves in any bookshop and find autobiographies “written” by men in their early twenties who have yet to achieve anything in life. This gimmick is a cynical attempt at milking even more money from a society that is in recession and from people that are quite often poor even in a time of plenty.

And all this just for kicking a ball around.

A SENSE OF PERSPECTIVE

Newly-qualified nurses (NHS grade D) in England start on a salary of between approximately £16,500 and £18,250 per year, trainee fire fighters start on around £21,000 per year and the people who pick up the telephone at The Samaritans are volunteers.

Apologists bleat that a footballer’s career may only last around ten years. A teacher, for example, may work from the age of twenty-five to the age of sixty-five (giving a nice round figure of forty years), so if a footballer is supposedly earning in ten years what he cannot earn in forty, he must earn in a week what anyone else earns in four. The equivalent salary for John Terry would be £32,500 a week.

And here’s a quote from http://www.endchildpoverty.org.uk/

"3.9 million children - one in three - are currently living in poverty in the UK, one of the highest rates in the industrialised world. This is a shocking figure given the wealth of our nation."

PUT IT IN THE BOX

It is not necessary to look at any more figures - it is a well-known fact that the money which makes modern football dizzy comes not from gate receipts but from television. So the solution is simple – vote with your pockets. Stop paying for expensive live football and put the money on the table in front of you. In these recessionary times, I’m sure nobody would reproach you for putting half of it back in your pocket.

Then find what you consider to be a worthy cause and put the other half of the cash in the charity box. Twenty quid a month (or whatever figure you are left with) could make a huge difference to a terminally ill child, a homeless old woman or the family of a sick person that is struggling to make ends meet because the government will no longer provide the necessary care.

As for watching the football, if the season ticket prices are too high, don’t buy them either. When the clubs see their grounds empty, they will soon listen to what the genuine fans have to say.

It’s time we started caring about those who need help, instead of insisting on making millionaires richer.