our beautiful game
£5.1 bn. Five-point-one-billion-pounds. Just when I thought I couldn’t possibly become more disillusioned with professional football I read of a retired manager’s pay-check and it almost made my blood boil. Last week it was inadvertently revealed that Alex Ferguson, MUFC’s recently retired ‘ex’, had been paid in excess of two-million quid for a contract of employment that stipulates the grand sum of twenty days’ employment from him in return. The judicious use of a Texas Instrument’s finest tells me this equates to an immoral daily rate of £108,000. If you’re a fan of Saturday morning’s ‘Fighting Talk’ you’ll know what I mean when I say that I’d love to hear Sir Alex ‘defend the indefensible’ on this one!
In a business that frequently boasts massively inflated and ill-deserved salaries, Ferguson still manages to stand-out as an absurdly paid individual whose last significant act as a permanent employee was to arrange the appointment of a suitable successor, to whom he was to pass the gilded baton of success and achievement. Oh, yeah, it was David Moyes. As it turns out, United’s other club ambassador, Bobby Charlton, earns less in a year than Ferguson does in a day.
Back in 2011, the Living Wage Foundation asked the Premier League clubs to pay all their workers exactly that, the living wage of (currently) £7.85 an hour, or £9.15 if you’re in the smog. Three years down the line only one club, Chelsea, have complied with the request, and, incredulously, only six clubs even bothered to respond to the request. The general feeling appears best summed-up by Sunderland’s CEO whose two sentence response culminated in “I do not feel the matter warrants further discussion”. I beg to differ, Ms Byrne, oh how I beg to differ. So, yesterday’s news of the £5.1bn spent by Sky and BT has been hailed by the Premiership’s Scuadamore as a fantastic deal for all those involved in football at all, and any, level. It will be interesting to see how much of this obscene amount actually filters down to those who truly need and deserve it. Nowhere is greed, selfishness and arrogance better illustrated than in our own football league, and it is this that has the rest of the world enthralled. God help us, the lunatics truly are running the asylum.
