Soccer Players Wages
Soccer is the most popular sport in the world with billions of people in all countries following their team. But despite soccer’s popularity, it does not seen right that soccer players should get paid the amounts they do when their job is not as worthwhile and life threatening as other jobs like soldiers and doctors. Currently the top ten players in the world earn between $15million to $50million a year, compare this with normal jobs where people earn $32,000 a year. The highest earning player is David Beckham who earns approximately $966,000 per week, working out to be $50 million per year (Kaitlin Madden).The only way to control the salaries of soccer players is for the soccer bodies such as UEFA and FIFA to put a cap on the amount of money a team is allowed to spend on player wages. No countries currently have a cap although Italian soccer teams had looked into it a few years ago but never went through with it. A cap system would not only lower wages but would ensure fairness between all the teams in a league. It is hard to justify these soccer players getting paid so much when they no longer seem to have any passion for the game. When players are representing their country playing for the national team many no longer sing the national anthem when it is being played before the game unlike the rugby players who sing there national anthem with such pride. It seems that soccer players are now only in it for the money and they don’t even care about winning cups or medals anymore. An example of this is a soccer player called Lucas Neil who when it came to choosing which club he was going to play for he chose to go and play for West Ham, even though he was being offered a contract with Liverpool who are a much bigger club with a far better history and are a club who have always been at the top whereas West Ham are a club in the middle/lower end of the division and in their history have not won very much. Lucas Neil simply chose to play for West Ham because they were offering him more money to play for them. This choice clearly shows that players nowadays are choosing money over club history and the pride in playing for one of the best teams in the country and even in the world (Beckles, Kieran). Another argument for why soccer players shouldn’t get paid the amounts of money they do is many people say they are only kicking a ball around for between ninety to one hundred and eighty minutes per week. Compare this salary to the much lower salaries of soldiers on the front line, law enforcement officers, doctors, and teachers or in fact any other job where people are risking their lives for other people or are doing an important job in order to help people. It is not right that soccer players are getting paid on average $90,000 a week and these other jobs which are far more important to the people in society are not even getting paid this amount for a years’ work that they do. Players should not get paid as much as they do because it is now having a negative impact on the game overall. The price players are worth and the amount of wages they are willing to play for has now increased so much that only the richest clubs can afford the players. This is creating a large gap between the rich clubs and the not so rich clubs who are getting left behind. In many of the Premier Leagues around the world it is the rich clubs who are winning the league year in year out because they are the ones with the best, most expensive players. The clubs and Football Associations need to act before the high wages totally destroy the game because the smaller clubs are no longer able to compete. For example Chelsea Football Club was sold to the Russian Billionaire Roman Abramovich in 2003. The club was able to spend millions of dollars buying the best players in the world, this lead to them winning the Premier League Title two years in a row 2004 and 2005 and then again 2010 and being runner up in the years in-between. This was because no other teams could compete because they had a team of the best players in the world. At the opposite end Portsmouth Football Club went into administration in 2010 because they were a smaller club who could not compete with the big clubs like Chelsea and could no longer afford to pay player salaries (Trophy Cabinet).
These players are earning on average $90,000 a week. This is far too much money for one person to spend in one week which simply means that these players have more money than they can even spend. Having this much money often leads players to get involved with alcohol and drugs and has led to many famous players getting into serious trouble with the law. Famous soccer players such a Paul Gascoigne and George Best turned to alcohol and both had severe medical problems because of the amount of alcohol they drank simply because of their soccer lifestyle and the amount of money they were earning and they didn’t know what to do with all the money. Other very famous soccer players have ended up in court or prison because they have so much money that they end up going out on a night out and get into trouble with other famous people, paparazzi or members of the public. Therefore the large salaries often lead to players living a negative lifestyle (McQueen, Anderson). There are some people who will argue that soccer players don’t earn too much money and they are entitled to the amount of money they do because of the type of work they do. One argument is that professional soccer players have to make many sacrifices. They don’t get to spend a lot of time with their family or friends and they often miss a lot of their children’s childhood because they are playing or training all the time. They often spend a lot of time away from home because of away games. Soccer players do not have a normal life like most other people. They have to work extremely hard and keep their bodies in the best of shape in order continue playing soccer. While this is true for many of the top players playing in the Premier League, it still does not justify the high salaries they earn, because this is the career they chose. Another argument would be that soccer players do deserve the amount of money they are getting because their careers are so short mostly only until they are in their early thirties and so therefore the money that they earn over their short career has to last their lifetime. However soccer players know their careers are going to be short and so they should have a plan for what they are going to do once they have finished playing soccer, for example they may go into higher education and get a university degree in order to get a job in a different area, this would mean they would still be getting a salary and wouldn’t be depending on the money they had made previously. No matter how many arguments there are that soccer players deserve the amount of money they get, the large salary is always going to be unjustified and that soccer players can never fully earn that amount of money no matter how many games they play, how often they train or the other sacrifices they have to make. It can never be right that a player earns $90,000 a week especially considering the current recession we are in and how there are many people in other countries who can’t afford one meal a day.

Works Citied
Beckles, Kieran. “Premier League Star Lucas Neill Feels the Pinch of Economic Crisis.” http://bleacherreport.com/articles/242852-premier-league-star-feels-the-pinch-of-economic- crisis August 26th 2009. Web. 22 Nov. 2011.
Madden, Kaitlin. ‘’How much do top soccer players earn?’’ http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/worklife/06/07/cb.footballers.earn.what/index.html June 2010. Web. 22 Nov. 2011.
McQueen, Anderson. ‘’ Do the Premiership's young stars get paid too much, too soon?’’ The Guardian 3 Jan. 2007. Print. 22 Nov.2011. http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2007/jan/03/sport.comment1 ‘’Premier League Footballers do not make too much money.’’ http://www.epltalk.com/premier-league-footballers-do-not-make-too-much-money-6183 23 Apr. 2011. Web. 22 Nov. 2011.
“Trophy Cabinet” http://www.chelseafc.com/page/HistoryTrophiesIndex/0,,10268,00.html May 2011. Web. 22 Nov. 2011.