Meanwhile, in the People's Republic of Catalunya....

[Uilleam 5,618]

Despite the attractions of playing for Pedro Caixinha, I think we are blown out the water here

 

Barca to make Messi first £1m-a-week player

 

Duncan Castles

July 9 2017, 12:01am,

The Sunday Times

 

 

Lionel Messi will take football salaries to an extraordinary new level when he formally agrees a vastly improved four-year contract later this month. Barcelona are to pay their most important player a basic wage worth more than £1m a week.

 

Messi’s gross salary under the agreement announced by Barcelona has been set at an annual €62m (£54.8m), according to a club source. If the contract runs for its full term — by which stage the Argentina international will be 34 — Barça are committed to paying him £220m, before performance-related bonuses.

 

Although Messi has been consistently courted by — and encouraged the interest of — well-heeled suitors in Europe and Asia, Barça insist the decision to hand him football’s most lucrative playing contract was instigated by them. They reason that the sum is a fairer reflection of Messi’s ability to generate income for the Spanish club.

 

Barcelona delivered total revenues of €620.2m (currently £548.6m) in 2016, the second highest in football after Manchester United’s. Last season, the club budgeted for €695m (£614.8m) of income, and according to its own analysis, Messi contributed 20% of that figure.

 

There is also a clear political element to the effort to keep the 30-year-old maestro happy with his financial terms, retaining his status as Camp Nou’s most important individual, and out of the reach of avaricious rivals such as Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain.

 

While Sandro Rosell, the club’s president between 2010 and 2014, had intended to cash in on Messi’s value in the transfer market and promote Neymar as an on-field successor, the current regime, led by Josep Maria Bartomeu, has scrapped that strategy. Instead, there is a pragmatic recognition of Messi’s fundamental importance both to the team and to the socios (club members) who elect the board.

 

Barça’s move to elevate Messi’s basic salary significantly beyond the €21m (£18.6m) net that Real Madrid pay Cristiano Ronaldo may also serve to complicate their main competitor’s effort to keep their own leading goalscorer in Spanish football. Ronaldo, who signed a revised five-year deal in November, recently informed Madrid that he wanted to leave the country after a state investigation into his tax affairs, sparking excitement among fans of his previous club Manchester United. Messi is also embroiled in tax evasion allegations.

 

Ronaldo’s head-to-head contest with Messi to be recognised as the planet’s best footballer extended to a quiet satisfaction that his remuneration at Madrid surpassed that of his rival in Catalonia. While the Portugal forward’s personal commercial revenue will continue to comfortably outstrip Messi’s, Madrid are not expected to match or better the basic wage of a player who last year was said to have been the subject of an offer of “more than €100m per year” from China.

 

Messi’s deal comes 56 years after Fulham’s Johnny Haynes became the first player in England to be paid £100 a week. By 1994, striker Chris Sutton was picking up £10,000 at Blackburn Rovers. In 2009, Carlos Tevez topped £200,000 a week at Manchester City — the striker now earns more than three times that with Shanghai Shenhua in China.

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/barca-to-make-messi-first-1m-a-week-player-vmtc3l8wk (Paywall)

[compo 6,463]

The whole games gone loopy money in the end will destroy some clubs just look at the way sky sports seem to be coming more Interested in the indian premier cricket

[MacK1950 2,271]

As I have said many times with these astronomical figures for tranfer fees/remuneration etc. the domino effect is awaiting.