Congratulations to Chelsea and Roman Abramovich on completing the set of club trophies on the Russian’s watch with victory in the Club World Cup.
It is a fantastic achievement.
But let’s not forget it is an achievement which has come at a cost of roughly £5billion, a sum that has done as much to overheat and distort the global football market as any other.
In the National League, the fifth tier of English football, I know of a team paying £7,000 a week to a player in order to ‘compete’.
That’s £6,900 more than the net salary I was earning in the same division with Stafford Rangers 33 years ago.
Now, before Chelsea fans get the hump, this isn’t about their football club.
Abramovich could have bought Liverpool, Manchester United, whoever, and I’d have said the same.
But when such as the Blues owner comes in and quadruples wages and fees, then the simple logic is that the clubs they are competing with have to follow.
It’s not just a case that when United, Liverpool, Manchester City or, most recently, Newcastle sell out that Aston Villa and Leeds have to follow, however.
It’s that those clubs getting relegated and say, ‘Right, we have the parachute money but that is to be able to cover wages and we’ll gamble to get promoted again by not just keeping wages high but buying the better players from the Championship and League One as well’.
Then on it goes until it ends up with a non-League player earning £364,000 a year.
When NTL pumped fortunes into ITV Digital in the early Noughties, and started to pay ridiculous money for Championship, League One and League Two football before going bankrupt, it was the norm in League Two for players to earn between £3,000 and £7,000 a week all because they had to chase whoever was at the top.
And more recently it has come from a situation in which one club can so outspend others that everyone else has to find a sugar daddy, which inevitably invites some dubious characters into our game.
Money then trickles down and becomes the norm to the point where I’ve heard of assistant-managers at smaller Premier League clubs earning several million pounds a season.
Not all clubs can find sugar daddies, of course, and that leads to Premier League CEOs Richard Scudamore and Richard Masters having to find more ways to keep the supply of cash getting higher.
That in turn creates a super-corporate culture in which someone such as me is given a 20-minute slot to interview a former team-mate — I’m speaking to Jamie Carragher for French TV on Wednesday — in amongst a host of other broadcasters.
That makes things really impersonal between clubs and the local and national press, and even more so between clubs and supporters, who are still the most important people at any club.
These are unintended consequences for Abramovich and Chelsea, of course, and Blues fans won’t care that a club in the National League is paying £7,000 a week.
But the wages and fees Abramovich helped to overheat have seen clubs go bust chasing the dream and your average fan priced out of the game, and that is not so much something to be proud of.
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