Liverpool FC Forum

by **stmichael** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 11:58 am

Found this very interesting article in today's Sunday Times.

Striking it rich, Rob Hughes, The Sunday Times 27.3.05

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Kicking a football around has never been so profitable, with dozens of Premiership players aged 30 or under in the top 100 of the Sunday Times Young Rich List.

The impression that footballers are a breed apart, and simply the best-paid young men in our society, will be emphatically confirmed by the 2005 Rich List in The Sunday Times next week.

In a listing detailing the net worth of those aged 30 or under, no fewer than a quarter of the top 100 in all walks of life in Britain and Ireland turn out to be those who can kick a ball, and take the kicks. “In the 16 years I’ve done the Rich List,” says the compiler, Philip Beresford, “I have never known such a high concentration of one group in any listing.

“You have to remember,” adds Beresford, “that these lists cover everything from industry to modelling, pop music, film, the lot. The pattern that shows up so markedly is that big, ruthless people at the peak of football are taking it all, leaving nothing for the rest.” Cast your eye down the young millionaires in our abbreviated list of players. One of them, Wayne Rooney, is not even out of his teens. His weekly £50,000 pay packet, his fiancée Coleen McLoughlin’s front-page spending habits and his change of club and agents in his teens are as legendary as his unquestionable skill and his as-yet-uncontrolled temperament.

Rooney could go either way, genius or has-been, at an age when most men are still struggling to take out, never mind pay off, their first mortgage. He’s at the bottom of our ladder of £6m laddos, but he has his own image rights and there could, as Sir Alf Ramsey once said of Colin Bell and PR guru Max Clifford said in a different context of Rooney, be no limit to what the boy can achieve.

Sitting proudly at the top of the list, with a staggering £28m, we find Robbie Fowler, once of Liverpool and England and now a sporadic performer for Manchester City with a legacy of injuries and other distractions. Fowler developed an entrepreneurial flair for accumulating houses to let.

Not far behind him, with £25m, is Sol Campbell, who was skilfully managed so that the free transfer forced on his boyhood club, Tottenham Hotspur, enabled him to break the pay scales at Arsenal.

Money, money, money. We are either sick of hearing how much footballers earn and how many ways they invent to squander it, or else the fascination never wanes when it comes to watching their so-called celebrity high-jinks.

Talent itself will not keep them among the top earners.

Jermaine Pennant is in prison, but the sheer skill and bravery he shows on a football pitch are still capable of propelling him to stardom if only he can grasp it and stop mixing fast cars with alcohol.

The list published here is limited to Premiership players and so does not include the icon of global high earning, David Beckham. Other notables, such as Alan Shearer, Roy Keane and Ryan Giggs, might retain bragging rights over the young pups but are over the age limit and so are excluded from the Young Rich brigade.

Inevitable patterns emerge. The three dominant clubs — Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal — provide the home of 14 names on the list. Liverpool and Newcastle United had, or sold, five others.

Fowler remains top for now, but doesn’t that say something for the fact that he persevered after losing his way, and after undoubtedly harrowing injury and self-doubt, rediscovered something of his old touch this season? Sadly, Kevin Keegan, the manager who coaxed that determination, that pride in performance, back into Fowler has bitten the bullet and retired, because not all the Manchester City players responded to his “old-fashioned” enthusiasm.

Closing in on Fowler and Campbell is Rio Ferdinand, who, despite eight months out for missing a dope test, has his Israeli agent Pini Zahavi to thank for managing two extraordinary moves in the transfer market: from West Ham to Leeds to Manchester United. And still Ferdinand’s capacity, both in the playing and earning sense, is barely at mid-career level.

Next to him, Thierry Henry has achieved the dual dream ticket: so many graceful goals, such a lot of instantly identifiable va-va-voom. In the same Highbury team, despite Real Madrid overtures, remains Patrick Vieira, along with Freddie Ljungberg, the king of Calvin Klein.

The old Sir Alex Ferguson school of Gary Neville, Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt persevere to stay handsomely in the money league. The nomadic Aussies Harry Kewell and Mark Viduka prove that by wandering they do not lose their way when it comes to controlling the purse strings, and even Emile Heskey, who impresses the few judges that count, is as solidly in the chart as Patrick Kluivert, an undoubtedly marvellous talent with less than steady reliability.

We can already see where the cash flow is heading in the near future, who will soon be rising up the chart. Joe Cole, remodelled it seems by Jose Mourinho and ready to trade in his old adidas contract for Puma, is already in the money list, as is Didier Drogba, a compelling and contrary figure in that he was 26 — sporting middle age — before he burst on to the European scene at Marseille last season.

Where, apart from the obvious collections of Lamborghini Gallardos and Ferrari Testarossas, do these young blades sink their wealth? The streets and the nightclubs have dubious lures, but the Professional Footballers’ Association has a magazine, called The Players Club, specifically for the elite.

“Like their talent,” says PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor, “many players have extraordinary lifestyles.” To showcase this, and to attract the right kind of advertisers, The Players Club is the ultimate glossy.

It merges retirement pension advice with fashion accessories to die for — from cars to kitchens, yachts to Spanish property investments. In the latest edition, you can read about the Bugatti Veyron 250mph supercar. It is not yet on the market, but guess who has placed an order at £785,000 and anticipates taking delivery in September? Eat your hearts out, Premiership under-thirties. It is, naturally, a Mr D Beckham of Madrid.

Current reports are mixed on whether it is the right- or left-hand-drive model he requires, depending on whether he intends to stay at Real or seek a new club back home.

But it ill behoves us to look in envy or scorn at any one of the new rich. We want them, don’t we, to entertain us? We will begrudge the English among them less if they convert their gifts to winning the World Cup for the first time in 40 years — and probably some of them have placed larger bets than you or I ever could on doing just that.

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