http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/23538218

'Footballers, they're the real bastards!' shouted a banker...

In some respects the sums that they make are obscene but they probably have more justification than bankers.


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To a degree the sums can be justified on simple market grounds - the teams with the best players make most revenue, both from getting fans into the ground, TV rights deals (particularly in Spain, where Real and one other club share the vast portion of TV revenue) and foreign merchandising. Even assuming Bale is being paid 1.2million euros a month (which to me sounds a little hyperbolic) Real will own his image rights as part of the contract, so for example any shirt with his name on it they sell will earn them money. So they may be paying him 300K a week but it won't be costing them 300K a week, if you see what I mean.

However, by any rational notion the fees and wages at the top of football - in England, Spain, France and Italy anyway - are utterly out of control and not really based on any rational financing. Michel Platini has tried to bring in rules to make things less silly, but they don't really seem to be making all that much difference. Real make an awful lot of money (they actually have the highest income of any football club anywhere in the world) but they seem to be spending even more in a way that any normal person would consider insane. I did see a statistics that said Real Madrid have spend over 1billion euros on transfer fees in the last ten years. That in a country whose economy is almost literally bankrupt. Something about it all feels very, very wrong.

If he's costing them anything per week, then they're paying too much. Businesses are meant to make a profit from their employees.

Well that's the thing isn't it, most football clubs are not run as businesses.

A lot are rich mans hobbys

I suspect a lot are rich men's money laundering ops.

Tax write off might be a more appropriate answer.

What all the EU goverments should do is agree a 100% transfer tax - that way if football clubs want to pay silly money for players at least the goverment can pay off some of their debt

What they should insist on is players being directky employed by the clubs. That way they'd pay their 40% tax. At the moment they can be self employed, invoice the club to 'their company' and pay 20% on company dividend rather than 40% income tax.

I have no problem with that but make sure that the players pay all their taxes, including "image rights" which are usually held offshore in some tax haven.

Some nations do impose such taxes already - the way transfers are paid in Spain means any transfer fee paid to a Spanish club usually has 50% tax slapped on it. It's treated as a capital gain by the club I think.

Note : In this case, as Bale's transfer was paid into a UK club rather than a Spanish one, I think zero tax would have been paid as we don't have the same rules. I don't think any nation would get away with a specific tax on football transfers though, I think that would be against EU 'freedom of movement' rules. The best they can do is classify exactly what type of transaction a football transfer counts as, and then impose tax upon it the same way as any other money transfer of the same type.

I do not think that freedom of movement would be infringed by a tax on transfers.