Where are the rich footballers?

Footballer – what a life. Kicking a ball and earning thousands... “The real life is the one my friends live. My life as a footballer has nothing to do with it. When I stop to think about it, I’m terrified by how protected I really am. Top-level athletes don’t live a normal life at all. I live in a bubble,” said Manchester United’s Spanish midfielder Juan Mata.

“I remember my first professional contract, with Real Madrid B. I was 18 years old and earned around 90,000 euros per year. Salaries at the top level are incredibly high compared to the rest of society, which earns laughably little by comparison. In football, I’m an average earner, but compared to 99.9 percent of Spaniards and people on this planet, I’m getting a truly obscene amount,” added the Burgos-born player.

His words are more than a year old, yet they continue to resonate strongly—not just among fans, but among footballers themselves. The question now is: is this a personal opinion, or an objective truth? Where are the rich footballers?

This is the question FIFPro (the International Federation of Professional Footballers’ Associations) tried to answer. In 2016, it conducted a groundbreaking global survey. Manchester University processed the results, gathering responses from nearly 14,000 footballers in 54 countries and 87 league competitions across Europe, North and South America, and Africa. It was the largest data-driven study ever conducted with direct input from the players themselves. It followed a 2015 study from a Malaysian university covering Asia and Oceania, which collected responses from over a thousand players across eight countries. More than 45 percent of respondents reported earning less than $1,000 per month—around the global lower average for salaried workers.

Of course, on the opposite end are the stars whose salaries are listed annually in rankings of the world’s best-paid athletes. But the survey found that only 2 percent of footballers worldwide earn $720,000 or more per year.

The biggest problem turned out to be salary discipline among clubs. A full 41 percent of players said that at least once in the past two years, they did not receive their wages on the date agreed in their contract. The most common delay was one to three months. “For FIFPro, it is unacceptable for such a situation to be considered normal,” stated the federation’s evaluation report.

A particularly disturbing finding revealed that 700 footballers—6 percent of the total—were placed under psychological pressure when they refused to extend an expiring contract with their club. Sanctions such as being demoted to the reserve team, being banned from training with teammates, or other measures aimed at preventing them from doing their job were used to coerce them into signing a new contract. “This is the first time we’ve had real numbers showing the position some players end up in at the end of their contracts,” the FIFPro report stated.

Footballers in Slovakia also face various types of pressure from clubs, as evidenced by cases already handled by the Slovak players’ union, ÚFP. In all cases, the clubs ultimately admitted their mistakes either directly or indirectly. “Salary discipline is a problem in Slovakia too, as well as bans on training with the team, which is against FIFA rules,” warned sports lawyer and ÚFP adviser Jozef Tokos.

In stark contrast, internal information from English football revealed the weekly wages of the highest-paid players at Premier League clubs. In as many as ten teams in the top English league, the top earner makes over 100,000 euros per week. “Even on a global scale, Premier League money is extremely high. The gap from Slovak reality is light-years wide. Here, only a few well-paid players exist across two or three clubs. The rest earn wages barely above the national average. I know what I’m talking about—three-digit monthly salaries are a reality in the Slovak Fortuna Liga, especially for young players. From that, you can logically deduce the wages in the second division,” said Tokos.

Stanislav Šesták is one of the Slovak footballers who made it from the domestic scene to the international stage, finding success both at club and national level. “A footballer can earn decently during his career, perhaps like a regular entrepreneur, but after retirement he has to find a new career path. Sometimes I’m surprised by the people in the stands shouting at players that they’re millionaires—some fans earn more than the players on the field. Those of us who played abroad for a longer time were able to save more than what’s possible in the domestic league. Here, Slovan is the only club paying above-average by Slovak standards, and you can earn a bit more in Žilina or Trnava. But how many players in those clubs really earn above average? Certainly not all—just a few individuals,” he said in a comprehensive interview with the daily Sme. Šesták has always been known for his clear-headed outlook.

The statement by FIFPro Secretary General Theo van Seggelen, evaluating the findings of the survey, revealed that even the players’ association had not expected the reality of professional footballers' lives to be so stark. “After analyzing the responses, it’s clear to us that we need to develop a package of measures so that footballers are genuinely integrated into the structure of society. But creating these measures must be a joint effort: clubs, leagues, federations, UEFA, FIFA. We need to establish standards that clearly define what the job of a footballer entails. This means updating regulations globally and jointly addressing the economic future of football. If the new FIFA President Gianni Infantino truly aims to reform football worldwide, then the results of our survey are one of the foundations he should build on.”

So, is the life of a professional footballer really as golden as it seems? In 2016, a players’ association called the Union of Football Professionals (ÚFP) was established in Slovakia. Its president is Slovan Bratislava goalkeeper Ján Mucha, and it already has more than 190 members from Fortuna Liga teams. This year, the union plans to expand its membership to include professional footballers from the second-highest league as well. At the time the aforementioned survey was conducted, ÚFP was not yet a member of FIFPro, so players from Slovak clubs could not participate. In December 2016, the Union of Football Professionals was admitted to FIFPro as an observer member, successfully completing the first of three steps toward full membership. In the future, Slovak players will also participate in surveys like the one from 2016.