At the top level? Absolutely they do, along with a lot of other professional sports people. I was a professional educator. My job was to teach young people to express themselves via their language and among other things I taught Mathematics, History, Geography and German. The highest salary I ever earned was about $80,000 AUD per year for this work. According to the website “www.statista.com/” the average pay earned by Manchester United players was over 7 million GB pounds (about 13.3 MILLION AUD) per season. Every club except 3 had players earning over 1 million pounds per season. For me as a teacher, even if I earned 100,000 AUD a year, it would take me 133 years to earn what a player for Man U to earn in a single year.

He kicks a ball around, sometimes not even all that good. I taught kids to read, to value themselves as humans, and a thousand other things. And yet, the world in which we live values and rewards a ball kicker vastly more than people like teachers, nurses, police offers, firemen and women. I even hear that teachers in the US have to get second jobs to get by. If that is true, then that is bullshit which a capital B.

You should not think about how much players earn but you should think about how much people spend to watching football.

I’m Italian so I will give you the example of my country but I am sure that is happening the same situation everywhere.

Players earn much money because they help teams to earn money from championships prices. Where do you think the championships prizes come from?

They come from TV rights, tickets, shirts and other gadgets and sponsors.

TV rights prices are increasing season by season. In Italy to watch Serie A you have to spend 50€ per month. To watch a game at the stadium you have to spend 40€ (And you are in a place where you can’t see anything).

The fact is that if people will stop to spend money on football, they won’t give so big prizes and players won’t earn so much money.

The best way to look at I think is that the money is always going to exist in football so would I rather a billionaire profit from this or people from all around the globe coming from different backgrounds, some who had truly awful upbringings, benefit from it. I think the answer becomes a lot more straight forward then.

I also think these players coming from less privaliged backgrounds are more likely to do good with there money. Of course you’ll get a handful of individuals who spend recklessly and give footballers a flashy bad name, but the charity work that is able to to be done in countries like Senegal (Mane is one of the first names that came to my head due to being a Liverpool fan) would never have been able to have been done without football.

Yes. Ideally, they wouldn’t earn mega wages that threaten the stability of the clubs. The players could get paid a decent wage and then the leftover money could be used to stabilise the club and be invested in the local community. But we all know that if they didn’t take the money then the chairman/board would take it instead. And because the players are the ones on the stage, generating the product then they deserve it fair more than the shareholders.