To think it’s ridiculous that footballer Mohammed Salah is now earning £1m a week?

[KimberleyClark]

He earns an amount in a week that most ordinary people could live on for the rest of their lives!

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/sep/29/liverpool-mohamed-salah-earning-at-least-1m-a-week-adviser-ramy-abbas

It's totally obscene, OP. YANBU.

The problem is with the system and adoration as a whole not the individual.
If my employer told me they were going to pay me £1m a week, I’m not going to say no thanks am I? If it’s going to me or nothing at least I can give some to charity if I want.

No! Curry for 2 last night was £32. It was just an example of a treat that some people think nothing of spending a couple of times a month.

He’s a Liverpool legend! He deserves every penny!

Actually I do not think it obscene

This young man (Sarlh ) is clearly earning a huge amount of money but he is very talented and there are a lot of football fans. The Premier league makes a fortune. But Football is international - so if the UK reduced footballers wages - then they may go to Spain / France if money is their object.

Personally I would rather have a Salah who has ( I think - happy to be corrected ) sends money back to his home country to build a hospital and a school and to give money to his home village that a Beckham who seems to prefer spending money on his lifestyle and his wife's business & cosying up to the current POW because he wants a knighthood.

The one thing I would say is for those football fans who have children - I would prefer if they used some profit to make the children's new strip a bit cheaper. Personally I would prefer them to make my DH's season ticket cheaper , but we live in hope , not expectation.

I was interested in a PP's post . JK Rowling is worth a fortune , but she did it herself and yes Market rules apply . I believe she is domiciled in the UK and pays all her taxes. She has not fled to Dubai or Monaco. So good for her.

No one picks on the earnings of Formula One drivers do they

@ShooLala 😀 I am surprised Monaco has enough apartments to go round.

Indeed x

@Azaleah - what do you think they should earn?

Say, if Salah makes his club via his skill/a brand (via his image being used) - £100m - how much of that should he get?

if via his talent or his image in sponsorship deals, he makes £52m a year, you’ve got to be certain that’s a small percentage of what he has brought in, the companies involved very rarely lose on these deals.

musicians / actors / sports stars - even bankers - taking less of the profits rarely reduce the cost to the consumer, the consumer prices have been carefully set based on what companies know they can charge. All that would happen is shareholders would get more money.

Lol

The top 0.01% equates to one in ten thousand. At least tens of millions of people play football around the world. Salah is much, much better than just the top 0.01%.

Usain Bolt is worth $90 million. Where do you draw the line at how much is too much?

I think anyone who is supremely talented ( & I don't know the % ) is worth the money if they are earning it ( & in the case of sport - people who watch etc - but see point above about profits to owners and cost of tickets / strips for children etc )

But how heartening to see someone who is giving away a lot to people less talented and in a worse position than he is. That is his choice and good for him. Many don't.

I must admit I am not in favour of actors / sports people who go and live in tax havens ( did Sean Connery do this and then think he could make his opinions known to the country he left ? ) But then , I am not supremely talented . 😀. I can provide witnesses to prove this should anyone require - ha ha

Google says there are 265 million male footballer players worldwide

Of whom 60.000 are professional players

What % is that?

So how much should they earn?

How would you regulate it globally?

How would you stop them getting round the wage cap? So let's say they're capped at £2000 a week. How are you going to stop the club giving out bonuses, or a subsidiary "sponsoring" the players? Or any sponsorship deal for that matter?

Why shouldn't they earn £1m? What is the problem? Its literally supply and demand in action. Noone suggests capping house prices, or expensive technology like iPhones and macs and Tesla's... people pay what they think they're worth for these luxury/top end/best items. Clubs pay what they think the top players are worth 🤷‍♀️

you wouldnt moan if it was you though.

Olympians don’t earn that sort of money (bar a very small number of exceptions) because the public aren’t as interested. Sure we’ll watch for the 2 weeks every 4 years, sometimes the commonwealth games, but the week in, week out races, they struggle to fill the stadiums in the uk and the tv viewings aren’t good enough to justify big fees for advertising etc.

the reason footballers at the top earn so much is because there is so much money in the game because (rightly or wrongly) the public prefer it to other sports and are prepared to a)pay and b) give time to it. The footballers are still only getting a tiny amount of that money.

sorry to be repetitive but - if the individual footballers earned less, that means the shareholders earn more. That £52m won’t go away if Salah doesn’t take it as income.

for those saying he shouldn’t earn that much, why do you think the owners of the club and the owners of the brands that use his image deserve the money more than him? Why shouldn’t he get a chunk of the money he brings in?

Fine by me. I’d do it for less than a million but I’m not very good. They want someone who will score lots of goals, and they can afford it.

He receives way less money than he earns for Liverpool Football Club, who own the means of production.

Therefore he is being exploited, just like the rest of us employees.

And that £52 million was agreed after very tough negotiations lasting months - based on how many goals/assists. how many Salah shirts sold etc

The linked article in the OP which doesn't seem to have been read by many PP details those negotiation that now are part of an elite MBA at an American university

Of course he didnt ‘give up his childhood’, how bloody ridiculous. Kids play football because they enjoy it, it’s not like going down t’pit!

Many professional football players of the prominence and era of Salah. Ronaldo, Mane have had tough -even brutal, short childhoods

Salah signed his first professional contract with a club in Cairo at 13 and was paid about £3.50 a week - his parents couldn't afford the bus fare back to his village so he slept on the ground at the stadium

Not downt pit but no picnic

Always the victim.

But all that 'always the victim' is an old trope around the deaths at Hillsborough

Same same old