These days football and money have become inextricably linked, it’s getting so it’s hard to even talk about football without pound signs coming into the conversation.
Back in 2016 Lottoland did a survey about which football stars were available with the lottery winnings from their respective countries, and the results made for pretty grim reading! With player salaries and transfer fees only heading in one direction, a pretty impressive lottery win would be required to nab one of the top players in the world.
Southampton’s record transfer fee currently stands at around £20 million, which was the amount paid to Monaco to secure the services of Guido Carrillo. Back in the summer of 2013 they paid £15 million for Pablo Osvaldo, beating the then record fee that had been set a year earlier when Gaston Ramirez arrived at the club.
Neither Ramirez or Osvaldo had played much in 2014 when Sadio Mane was signed for £12 million, so Saints fans were sceptical, however it was hard to argue with that fee in the end, especially given that after impressing for the Saints for a couple of years he went on to Liverpool for almost double the fee.
Of the current crop of transfers made by Southampton in the 2017/18 season — so far at least — striker Guido Carrillo has been the most expensive at £19.8 million. Early days to make a judgement on that one just yet, but expectations are high for the Argentine to make a big impact in what remains of the season. In fact the sum of all the players brought in to the club this season totals just over £55 million, a pretty impressive sum but one that still wouldn’t make the top ten list of global transfers.
The most expensive player coming in to the Premier League is of course Paul Pogba, with his £89 million move from Juventus to Manchester United in 2016 setting a new record. Below that, two more top ten signings include Romelu Lukaku’s move from Everton to United (again) for £75 million and Virgil van Dyke’s move to Liverpool from… well I think we know the answer to that one! The Pogba transfer only puts him in 5th position in the global transfer list (at time of writing) with Dembélé’s move to Barcelona, Coutinho’s to Barcelona, Mbappé to PSG and of course Neymar’s transfer to the Paris club has him on top of the list. For now at least!
In terms of player salaries, the Saints are paying top-dollar to striker Manolo Gabbiadini with the Italian striker pocketing £80,000 a week. Regular’s at St Mary’s may dispute whether they are seeing full value from that investment at the moment. Charlie Austin, Ryan Bertrand and Fraser Forster all pick up £70K a week, with nine more players being paid between £60-£65,000 per week. Of course while salaries like these would amount to life-changing amounts to the average punter, they barely make a ripple on the global scale. While poor old Cristiano is down in 5th place having to make ends meet on £365,000 a week, his old pal Messi up in Barcelona is taking home half-a-million pounds every week. The number one spot is the frankly ridiculous £615,000 per week that Shanghai Shenhua dole out to a reportedly unfit Carlos Tevez.
Sometimes that old adage about more money than sense really does ring true!