Erling Haaland’s obscene salary does not add up while fans are being fleeced
It is 46 years since British football hit the stunning watershed of making Trevor Francis the first million-pound player. Today Erling Haaland is poised, once all endorsements and sponsorship bonuses are factored into his 9½-year contract extension at Manchester City, to collect that same amount of money each and every week. Already with a level of personal wealth sufficient to invest in two private jets, the Norwegian can now acquire a veritable fleet. Truly, the days of Billy Liddell catching the 26 tram to Anfield with the Liverpool fans have never felt so remote.
All those examples of human connection between player and supporter – Sir Tom Finney completing his plumber’s apprenticeship and becoming a local magistrate, or Jimmy Armfield starting his match days with steaks that the butcher’s boy had brought – belong to the realm of sepia when it comes to a figure such as Haaland. We are so far beyond the looking glass that it is impossible to distinguish fantasy from reality. Haaland’s existence has long resembled a computer simulation, with an animated version of the man as a barbarian king featured in the Clash of Clans video game, and at last he has the mythically absurd salary to match.
Credit: Manchester City
Once fans could expect to share bus journeys with the people they idolised. But such contact has long faded, with the diehards now reduced to loitering outside training grounds in the forlorn hope of a reserve left-back lowering the tinted window on his Lamborghini. Haaland, in fairness, is far from the worst offender on the ostentation front. Yes, he has been pictured pairing a £300,000 watch with a Burberry pyjama set. But he was also seen during his first weeks at City shopping at Sainsbury’s, later mocking those who expressed surprise by tweeting: “At M&S. Bought a bag of Percy Pig. Don’t tell anyone.”
Went shopping today again! What did i buy? Anyone? pic.twitter.com/hoXA3QISZX
— Erling Haaland (@ErlingHaaland) July 25, 2022
The prospect of a £1 million-a-week contract will not necessarily change his personality. Lionel Messi has been drawing eye-watering numbers for years, and yet still insisted in Barcelona on living in an unspectacular suburb only a 10-minute drive from his parents. But the staggering money does accentuate the divide between the superstars and the fanbase, sharpening a sense that they are unreachable inside their gilded universe. “It’s like we live in a bubble,” admitted Juan Mata, when he reached £150,000 a week on joining Manchester United in 2014. “Compared to the rest of society, we earn a ridiculous amount. It’s unfathomable.”
Mata had a more acute social conscience than most in his position. He was the first player to donate one per cent of his wages to Common Goal, a network of 120 football charities around the world. Still, however much the leading players show this altruistic instinct, or pledge never to forget their roots, the danger lurks that the astronomical remuneration will turn their heads.
Take Marcus Rashford. He was the toast of the land in 2020, universally praised for his campaign to provide free school meals throughout the pandemic and for the fact he had not forgotten his own impoverished upbringing in Wythenshawe. But then he lost the advisers who had protected him, and he began defaulting to the cliches of the player who had too much too soon. Nothing conveyed the entitlement of somebody earning £325,000 a week so vividly as the sight, in the summer of 2023, of him parking his Rolls-Royce on double yellow lines in Wilmslow so that he and Tyrell Malacia could indulge in some private jewellery shopping.
Protesting against Haaland’s salary is akin to shouting into the wind, with the Premier League’s status as a global entertainment behemoth ensuring that the finest players will be rewarded like rock stars. Even so, it is difficult not to be astonished at how we have reached this point. As Arsenal manager for 22 years, Arsène Wenger was present for every stage of the league’s transformation into an endlessly-monetised content hub, and he could not help but despair at the wage demands. “Completely crazy,” he said, when the idea was first mooted of Paul Pogba joining United for £100 million. “I always thought that the record could not go any higher, and I was always wrong. Maybe in a few years, it will be 200, 300. Who knows?”
Who knows, indeed. If Haaland can command seven figures a week, and if Cristiano Ronaldo can rake in £177 million a year in that tinpot Saudi league, then any notional ceiling can be smashed clean through. The game’s implicit calculation here is that fans have long ceased caring about the money, that people’s grumblings about obscene salaries are immaterial if they keep paying for their tickets and TV subscriptions. It is a dangerous presumption, though. This season, we have seen fans at Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool and Everton all protest at rising ticket prices, under the banner “Stop exploiting loyalty”.
In this climate, United’s decision to scrap concessions for children and pensioners while splashing £200,000 every week on a wastrel like Antony comes across as grasping and tone-deaf. Haaland is very different to Antony, of course, in that he has spectacularly delivered for City, breaking goal records for fun. But there is only so long football can carry on adding zeroes to player contracts while relentlessly squeezing those who foot the bills. The stirrings of rebellion are plain to see. And the feeling of alienation that will flow from Haaland’s ludicrous pay packet can hardly help the mood.